I had a wonderful moment with my boys yesterday at the Alexandria, LA, McDonalds. Five-year-old Adam spent most of his time climbing around inside the play structure. Seven-year-old Toby, on the other hand, ate a couple of boxes of French fries, then started walking around in an open area, looking out the window and wanting to go out to the car. I walked up to Toby and started a little game. I would say the first syllable of a two-syllable word. He would say the second syllable, and I would then throw him up into the air. His speech has had me concerned the past few weeks, so this was a nice little test. We did the following words:

TO-BY
AD-AM (or as T. says, "Abam")
MOM-MY
DAD-DY
GRAND-MA'S
AN-CREW (Andrew is his roommate)
BLUE'S CLUES
THO-MAS

Adam eventually saw me tossing his brother up into the air, and he slid down the slide laughing. He held up his arms, so I took him and tossed him too. A couple of other little boys noticed me being silly. Fortunately, neither of them wanted to be thrown into the air, but one of them dropped on all fours and growled at me like a big cat.