Affirmative action

For a long time now, 'no' has meant, well, only Zachary knew; head shaking could mean "No, I don't wan't more juice", or "No, I'm really thirsty, give me juice", or even perhaps "No, I don't think the Mariners have what it takes to make it to the postseason this year". Over the months, we had a few guesses at what might constitute 'yes', but none has won out.

So we've been trying to get him to nod his head yes, and we've been saying 'yes' when he responds to a question by clearly agreeing in action. And yesterday we had a bit of a breakthrough - Meh reported that she was saying 'yeah' in response to Zachary agreeing with questions she'd asked, and suddenly Zachary looked at her and repeated 'yeah'. It was a one-time response, but it's something! Later in the day, he said 'yah' (as opposed to 'yeah') when Meh read him a particular book, on the page that has a pirate. He repeated this for me this morning; my best guess at the moment is that on a few occasions, I've pointed to the pirate and said 'yarrrr!' or something like that.

Also new today - Meh has always done hand motions for the itsy bitsy spider, a song that Zachary's a big fan of. Today she let him lead, and he actually kind of sort of initiated many of the motions: