I can eat with a spoon all by myself...

I love that my little boy is so generous with himself and his things ~ saying 'Hi' to everone he meets, giving random people and kids his toys, trying to feed me his food.

He copies so many words now, and jumbled 3 and 4 word sentences, where one can only make out one real word, and the sounds of the rest of the sentence.  Last week I gave him a dragon toy, and was surprised when he said 'Dragon' almost perfectly straight away.  This was the start of it, and its become super-chronic since.  Today we played a counting game on Sesame Street on the computer, and he attempted every number ~ getting at least half of them right, and some of the sounds in the others.  He is rather obsessed by the number 8 at the moment, which has eclipsed his love of the number 3.  At least he can say, 'eight' ~ he still says 'ghee' for 3.

The alphabet song.  His alphabet song craziness has died down ~ there was a time a couple of months ago when he sang it almost constantly for 3 weeks.  When I sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to him, he was mesmerised, as it is the same tune.  He sings quite well, and the tune is obvious to those who hear it.  He'll hardly sing the alphabet song now, though, even if prompted ~ other interests have taken over.  Blake's memory for tunes is amazing.  I sang 'Hot Cross Buns' to him once when he was 10mo, and this easter, at 20mo, I gave him a bun, and he started humming the tune after not hearing it that whole time.

His fascination with clocks still persists...his grandfather, who we are staying with, barely gets a look in if he is wearing his watch.  Blake will come through the door after a walk and check Rob's wrist for his watch, not even saying hello.  Blake will, though, greet nearly everyone else with a 'Hi' or 'Hello'!

This boy has been known to think about clocks in his sleep.  At the start of his clock obsession, a few months ago, I remember him sitting bolt upright from a deep sleep, pointing to the bedroom clock, exclaiming 'clock!' twice, and falling back to sleep ~ talk about obsessed!  He has also said 'car-car' in his half sleep many a time....I wonder what he's dreaming about...or if he is dreaming, or just saying his favourite word.  I shall have to search for signs of REM sleep next time, if I am in the room.

He has been intrigued with the concept of, and imitating, sleep of late.  Last week he took to making incursions into his grandparents' bedroom, laying on their bed, and making a fake snoring noise with a big smile on his face ~ 'aaawk-pshhooo, aawk, pshooooo!'  He also goes to the dogs' beds and pretends to be a sleeping dog.  I remember him copying the dogs at 9mo, crawling with a toy in his mouth after seeing the pup carrying a stick.  He was chuffed with his handy discovery of a way to carry things when crawling, without having to encumber his hands!

Blake and Snicket

It is very hard to induce Blakey to draw ~ he is so interested in how the tops go on the textas, how the pen clicks on and off, and how great the crayons are to chew (or how many he can hold at once in his hands); he finds the idea of making marks on the page with anything to be extremely boring by comparison.  Here is some typical toddler art ~ from a few months ago when he was actually into drawing for about 5 minutes...

He came out with his first spontaneous 2-word sentence today: 'Hello, guy' to a fellow walker in the park.  Not mimicked, just off the top of his head...he is 20.5mo corrected for prematurity.  He has now learnt all his basic colours (though sometimes mixes up orange and yellow), recognises the numbers 1-9, can point out at least 40 different animals, make the noises of 2 dozen of them, and usually identify the basic shapes.  He also knows all his positional words ~ over, under, beside, through, etc.  I am very pleased with his progress.  For a late starter (and a boy, at that!), he's doing a great job.

Sudden storm of mimicry

Blake has suddenly gone beserk with copying the words we say.  He's been adding new words to his repertoire at the rate of a few a day for a while now (usually only one gets oft repeated for a few days before he works on another), but suddenly it's many words, and his most-used-words are changing.  Where he used to say 'Car-car' when pointing to an object who's name he didn't know, he now says, 'Go!'

New words in the last 24hours are 'aaawww' (as in, awww, the game is over), 'ow' as in ouch, 'arrow' (originally copied from me when we were reading a medieval book, but said in correct context when he sees the arrow symbol), 'eight', and 'si' for six (and a dozen other mimicked words he's not reused since).  I am amazed at his ability to recognise numbers, as opposed to letters, point them out correctly when prompted, and say their names (although he has been pointing to 5 out of the ten numbers correctly for a month or more, naming them is new as of the last few days).  He can point out 1,2,3,6 and 8, and the others less frequently correctly.

His first true 2-word sentence came this morning, although it was copied from me and not spontaneous: he said, 'All gone,' as his milk was finished.  At 5 months old (3.5mo corrected age for prematurity) he would say, 'Hi mum-mum,' and 'Hi Dadda,' but he lost this ability as he moved on to crawling and walking, and it's only just reemerged.  He also says, 'Dereyougo,' for 'there you go,' when handing something to me.  Has regained the use of 'Hello' along with Hi and Hey, and often says it to strangers, as he sees me greeting strangers on our walks.  He will also not let us walk past rubbish on the ground; litter is to be picked up and binned, another habit from me!

Gardening time

We walk a couple of times a day for a total of about 2 hours, and spend much time growing vegies in the garden.  He learnt to count to two putting pea seeds in planting holes!  Yesterday on our walk he started galloping like a horse (two-time single-sided skip) ~ this pleased me, as I was recently reading about the decline in FMS (fundamental movement skills, like skipping, jumping, throwing, etc) in children of primary age, as kids are not outdoors naturally practicing these skills as often as used to be normal.  This is rather sad, that parents are not ensuring there kids enjoy moving their bodies and get the enjoyment that comes from mastery over the physical self at an early age.

Drinking from the tap...

A few days ago I found Blake on a stool in the bathroom, drinking water.... He'd run the tap, collected the water in a cup, and turned off the tap, and was supping.  I was surprised at his resourcefulness, instead of just coming to me and pointing to his cup.  He has a cupboard in the bathroom he likes to hide in, and last night he found it full of toilet rolls.  He picked up the bag, unloaded them onto the shelf in the 'prohibited cupboard' (it is full of bottles of shampoo, etc), closed the cupboard, and when prompted, threw the plastic packaging in the bin... I was so pleased at his helpfulness!  He is also starting to put his toys away when asked (phew ~ less rooms in the house will look like a toy-bomb went off in them!).

At the museum recently, Blake was watching another little boy put Lego blocks into a bucket.  I asked if he would like to go and help the little boy pack up ~ so he went and handed the boy the blocks, so he could put them in the bin.  At an age when so many kids snatch toys from each other, it is so refreshing to see him freely giving toys to other children!  When the little boy had had enough and wandered off, Blake followed him, tapped him on the shoulder and handed him another Lego block ~ he clearly thought they weren't done yet!  He makes me laugh a thousand times a day.

Ghee is for three, ghee is for cheese...

In the last fortnight, Blake is really putting the speed into his running.  He's really running now, as opposed to just toddling quickly.  Every photo of him in the park is of a large expanse with a small boy off in the distance!  When he falls over, he jumps his feet up under him now, and stands from a squat, without using his hands to assist.  This boy has no stranger anxiety whatsoever.  Yesterday in the park he walked right up to a very tall, older man (his head just came up to the fellow's knee), said, "Hi," and just stared at him while the gent and I made conversation.  When the chap went to leave, Blake toddles right along with him, and it took three tries for me to get him to follow me, rather than run off with this stranger!

All Blake's favourite and new words start with 'G'.  He is still obsessed with clocks and cars, but now the number 3 has joined those.  He calls it 'Ghee' and points it out wherever a 3 may be.  Ghee is also for cheese ~ his mid-afternoon snack.  Mention cheese and he trots straight to the fridge.  If I could make a 3 out of cheese, he'd be in heaven.

'Gish' is for fish.  Daily he feeds his goldfish (with my help, or the poor fish would drown in food), and last week he said 'gish' for the first time, while pointing to a picture of a goldfish, and later when feeding his pet.

'Goon' is for moon.  Blake often notices the moon before I do, pointing it out on our evening walk.  I was pleased to hear 'goon' for the first time last night.  'Galloon' is a balloon, and 'Gum-gum' is his dummy (dum-dum).  Thankfully, 'Go' is go, and he says this A LOT.  Saw a green light on the TV and said, "Go!" recently.   When a character on TV asked which shape fitted in the rectangle space, he pointed to the right shape, despite it being presented horizontally instead of vertically, like the original space.  I was impressed with that one!

Other new words these last few days are Duck, Cold, Whoops, Clean, Back-pack and Blue ball.  It's definitely been a wonderweek!

Performing arts, imagination and memory have been getting a workout of late. While watching a violinist last week, he bowed an imaginary violin.  I juggled three toys for him in the morning a few days ago, while wearing a silly duck hat his Nana had bought for him, and the next morning, the first thing he did was thrust the toys and the hat into my hands and stand back expectantly...perform for me, Mummy!  Aaah, kids.  You got to love that someone is impressed by your bad juggling...