@dfoster85 - I read a couple of books that I would recommend. One was Nurture Shock, which is about how all the conventional wisdom of child-rearing is wrong! It covers things like how to deal with lying, and it has a good section on child language development. In a nutshell, it says that the running commentary is less important than communicating with your baby. Pay attention to what s/he is looking at, and name those things. Respond when your baby babbles, as if you are having a conversation. Babies learn language through "conversation," through the response they get.
The other book I really liked was Pink Brain, Blue Brain. Some of it is quite technical, but you can skip those parts and just read the recommendations. It's mostly about how small the real differences are between girls and boys and how parents can work to minimize those. So, for instance, girls in particular benefit from formal training in spatial concepts, while boys need to be encouraged to talk and write and draw to develop their verbal and fine motor skills.