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.