My goodness, I'm dense.

Mateo communicates with us more and more, and he even understands some words like "bye," "hi," and "dinner."

I just discovered that he understands "dinner" tonight when we were in his room and I said, "Are you ready to eat? Let's get your dinner!" in a happy, animated mom voice. He immediately stood up, ran over to the baby gate and started bouncing around. I opened the gate and off he went into the kitchen. So yeah, he gets "dinner" now.

When I was pretty sure he was finished with dinner, I asked, "are you done?" He looked at me and smiled. "Are you done?" I asked again. That's when he started waving his hands around. I looked at him. "Done?" I said. He waved some more and started thrashing about.

That's when I got it. He was telling me he was done.

"Okay, okay," I said. "I'm sorry I don't understand sign language." I cleaned him up. Then I went into our bedroom to look up "finished"on the web (google, you rock!). Low and behold, I found this: Finish. And that's exactly what he did and has been doing for some time now. It's just that today he did it more clearly than he ever has before.

Later on we were in the living room; I was writing, he was flipping and flopping all over the couch while watching Yo Gabba Gabba. He wanted down, so I let him down, and he was messing around with toys on the ground. That's when he spotted his water table outside. He began to tilt his head, looking at me with his cute doe eyes, babbling something while making a waving motion that went up and down.

I said, "Stop doing that, you're too cute!" Cause come on, he is.

He kept doe eyeing me, making that gesture and babbling. I knew what he wanted: he wanted to go outside and play with his water table. Too bad it was after 6pm, he was in his PJs and already had a bath. In other words, it wasn't happening.

"Are you going outside?" I said jokingly.

When I was saying this, he just happened to be looking outside. As soon as he heard "outside," his head whipped around and he started making his waving gesture more frantically and tilting his head and his doe eyes got even bigger.

Gone are the days I can say anything in front of him and assuming he doesn't get it.

Then I realized if he was saying "finished" to me before, maybe that crazy wave means "outside." And interestingly enough, he always does that when he's leaving with his Dad to go outside to play. We always assumed he was waving goodbye to me.

So back to google, and low and behold I found this: outside/outdoors (go to the middle).

When my husband got home, I informed him that our child is a genius, told him why, got Mateo all goofed up because I said "outside" again (so my husband let him loose in the hallways in our condo for a few minutes), and when he came back in, started making the "outside" sign over and over.

Later on I realized my child has started his separate life from me. Because not only has he been communicating for a while now and we're just too stupid to get it, he's slowly learning more and more words and their meanings while at daycare.

So now I'm wondering when he's going to start telling people they're a "booger butt" or a "stinky boy" because I say that an awful lot to him these days. Terms of endearment, merely terms of endearment.