Things Zeke has been talking about lately

• Most common: he asks what things do. E.g., "What do dump trucks do?" Or: "What does Hector do?" Or: "What does a hexagon do?" (That's a new addition to his vocabulary. He learned it because he was asking about the names of the shapes in his shape-sorter. I don't think he really knows what it means.) A variation on this is that he wants to know what something "has" -- often when it's something he can't identify, like a picture in a book. He'll point to an image and say, "Daddy, what does this have?" I never know how to answer that one.
  
• He asks what things eat. Recently:
  Z.: "Mommy, what do shrimp eat?"
  H.: "Um, daddy?"
  Me: "Shrimp food."
  Z.: "Shrimp food. Yeah."
  Today he asked me what bulldozers eat.
  
• He asks if you like things. Mainly vehicles. Example: "Daddy, do you like tractors?" Particularly cute: "Talia, I show you something else, might you like it."
  
• He asks about the alphabet and how things are spelled. In particular, he frequently asks letter a word begins with. For example: "What letter stands for camel?"
• He has been stringing together some relatively complex ideas. This morning, he woke me up and announced: "Daddy, I want to open the door, but I can't. Can you help me?" Tonight, before bed, he asked: "Daddy, do you know something that Pipkin [a stuffed animal] dooze?... He loves trains. I do too."
  
• He likes to play games with language, especially songs. He likes to sing familiar songs but with strange words inserted into them, or with all the words pronounced funny, or whatever.