Teaching your Toddler

I kind of feel like I’m slacking. My son will be 17 months old and doesn’t speak much. His vocabulary is a very short list of words - mama, dada, baba, what’s that, hi, bye, his name, water, and ya. I’m a workin mama. I work 2nd shift, so my time is kind of limited, but I’d like some tips and tricks of things I could do to broaden his vocabulary.

And secondly, how do you teach a child this age to use utensils themselves? I feel like this is something he should know by this age, but because I don’t want the mess, I always fed himself, but he can’t learn that way if I do it for him so any suggestions are openly welcome!