Conversations with a 19 Month Old

As my previous post mentioned, Nathan is quite obsessed with books. He will often go grab a select few and bring them to me to read, or I will peek into his room (after there has been an extended period of silence....rarely a good sign!) to find him sitting on the floor amongst a small pile of books, just looking through them.
What surprises me though is the complexity of the books he wants me to read to him. While he'll sometimes ask for picture books with just the word of the picture being shown, he prefers stories. He seems to be a fan of Dr Seuss and one of his favorites is 'What Was I Scared Of', which is part of The Sneetches and Other Stories, but we just have the story as a book on it's own. We think he may be attracted to it because of the constant rhyming. He is also a fan of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I feel like it's a pretty big story for someone his age, but I'm certainly happy to read it to him.

Whether it's due to the increase in reading bigger, more complex stories or just because I don't really change the way I talk to him from the way I talk to Aiden, we've had a big increase in his vocabulary within the past week. He's asking more and more questions and instead of just doing the "what's that?" sort of thing just for the heck of it, he's asking questions about the current situation or location in a way that tells me that he actually wants to know and isn't just trying to attract attention by asking random things.
This morning's conversations went something like this:

Nathan: "Mommy, where daddy?"
Me: "Daddy is at work today."
Nathan: "Oh, work. Mommy work?"
Me: "Yes, mommy has to work later."
Nathan: "Oh, ok."

A little while later, as I notice Nathan attempting to climb up to reach something on the toy shelves:

Me: "Nathan, do you need help?"
Nathan: "Yes, bocks pease (blocks please)."
Me: "Ok, here you go."
Nathan: "Yay, bocks! Tink to! (Thank you!)"

As funny as it may sound, I really enjoy having conversations with such a little person. It keeps life interesting and he always seems to ask a question or make some sort of observation that surprises me.