The talker

Sami is talking more and more. I can usually understand him with context pretty well. Sometimes his words are more intonation than pronunciation. It seems like he used to say "thank you" pretty clearly, but now it's more the lilt and tone- and he's so polite- anytime someone hands something to him, he sings it out.
For a long time he called both Leila and Ali "Ali." Now he is calling them both "Leila." For his dad, he says "Habib." I just noticed the "H" last night- before that, it was usually "Abib," and the cutest pronunciation of that name I've ever heard. Poor H keeps saying "Baba" to him. Last night I asked him to give something to "Baba" and he carried it over, saying "Habib, Habib!"
When we were with  my family in Breckenridge, Colorado recently, he worked on his cousins' names. He would also say "Gamma, come!" as soon as she emerged from her bedroom in the morning. Then he'd get her to play with him for a while. He also called Grandpa "Gamma."
When we stopped to visit some friends in Albuquerque, he enjoyed the dog and the cats. The dog, Charlie, enjoyed him more than the cats did. "Charlie outside," he told me one morning.
He's putting words together more- not just collocations like "thank you," but the sentence about Charlie and asking Grandma to come. This morning he wanted his toothbrush, so he said "give me," and in the mornings when I give him his yogurt, and he wants to feed himself, he says "help you."