Creating a Diversion

Jack doesn't really like brushing his teeth. He'll do it. But he doesn't think it's that much fun. Each night we read three stories and after the last one, it's tooth brushing time. Once I grab the brush, he tries to distract me by throwing his stuffed animal that he has been carrying throughout story time onto the floor. It's like he's saying, "Oh no, I just dropped my monkey and I can't possibly brush my teeth without my monkey with me." He knows I'll bend down to get it, thus delaying the inevitable tooth brushing. He always loses. But I do appreciate the effort.

OH NO!! SHEEP!!

Jack's new favorite phrase is "Oh no!!!" He says it when he falls (or pretends to fall), he says it when he drops something, he says it when he goes to make a basket on his mini hoop and misses, and he says it whenever he thinks he'll get a good laugh which is frequently.

His words, in general are getting more clear and it's getting more and more fun! He's also getting better and better at physical skills. He can put his puzzle together quickly and manipulate the pieces really well. He is a pro at his shape sorter and catches a ball 9 out of 10 times. We have perfected the Pippen to Jordan assist to score on his basketball hoop. The other day, he was walking and tried to walk over a ball. He misjudged and fell forward. I was terrified that he was going to ram head first into the wall but he put his hands up perfectly and protected himself. It's amazing. He's turning more and more into a little boy each day.

However, there still are times where he can be a big old baby. I took him to the Barnyard Zoo on Sunday, thinking he'd love to see the animals. He liked the peacocks and then we moved over to the deer, which he was fine with until I fed it. He started to whimper and refused to look at the deer. I pulled him out of his stroller and decided to carry him. Good thing I did. As we passed the sheep pen, the sheep stuck his head out and made as loud of a noise as he could. The kid shook in my arms, threw his arms around my neck and started bawling. After that, the Barnyard Zoo pretty much sucked in his eyes. He didn't even want to look at the cow, which is one of his favorites. Here I was worried about scaring him by doing a monster theme in what will be his new, big boy room. Now I think that the monsters will be fine. It's the sheep I'll have to avoid!!

L-M-N-O-Pop!!

Jack loves going through his alphabet cards. He recognizes A, B, H, K, and S on sight but none of these are as fun as L, M, N, O and P. As soon as I get out the cards, he starts laughing and smiling and yelling. We go through all the letters and he always says SOMETHING after each one:

Me: B
Jack: Ba-ba
Me: C
Jack: gato (there's a cat on the card and Gato is his new favorite word)
Me: J
Jack: Ba-boo

However, when we get to K, he really starts getting fired up. And I don't even need to prompt him by saying the letters first:

"ELLLLLLLL!'
"EMMMMM!!"
"ENNNNNN!!"
"OOO!"
"POP!!"

Then he just says whatever comes to mind for the remainder of the alphabet with, for some reason, the exceptions of S, T, W, X, and Y. He can say those.

It's actually kind of strange what he decides to like. Today we were coloring. Sort of. At the moment, Jack is in his Jackson Pollock stage but he likes his crayons. He took them all out of the box and kept going, "Ohhhhh!" with each new color. I kept saying the name of the color he had in his hand, just to get him used to it. Then, out of nowhere, he grabs a color and says "llellow". I made him say it a few times before I believed it. Then he kept saying it all night, with the exception of when he decided he liked the word purple ("Perp"). Why not simple colors like blue or red or green? Nope, Jack likes "llellow" and "perp". But after I practiced saying yellow his way, with a lot more L, I realized it is much more fun that way!!

A Great Weekend with Nonny!! (Pictures coming soon!)

Nonny flew in this weekend for a much needed Jack fix. We calculated that since he has been born, she has gone no longer than 2 months before seeing him again. The last time she saw him was for his birthday in February and since we weren't planning on visiting until this summer, Nonny felt that she needed an April visit in between! And boy, are we glad she did!

Jack had an awesome time with his Nonny! Usually, he calls the computer, "Nonny" due to the fact that we Skype a lot with her. So seeing her in 3-D was at first a little strange. For about 10 minutes until he warmed up to her. From that point on there were a million laughs, hugs and kisses! We went shopping, bought new toys, played in the park and ran around just having fun. In fact, she wore him out so much that he slept until after 8 on both Friday and Saturday! So we were pretty grateful for that!!

We are sad to see her go (Mommy had fun too!) but in a month or so, we'll be down in Florida for two weeks of fun! Come on, Summer!!!

My Little Man

Easter

Getting ready to find some Easter eggs!

Found one!

Putting 'em in the "basket"

Another one!

Hey! There's Goldfish in these!

For Jack's first Easter (well, the first one that he actually was awake through!) we "hid" some plastic eggs filled with Goldfish, Cheerios and Teddy Grahams. We didn't know how well it would go over but we figured we'd try it. They weren't exactly hidden, at least not from the perspective of anyone with eyes but, come on, he's only 1! I dumped out one of his buckets to use as a basket. I told him to find the egg. "EGG!" he yelled and followed my directions to put them in the bucket really well. He loved shaking the eggs. In the process of one particularly vigorous shaking, he opened one and realized that there was even MORE magic! There was food in them! His favorite snacks. He would excitedly grab his shirt and pull on it after each little bite! He did way better than I expected and I can't wait to make the hiding more difficult and to take it outside!!

Jack's Dictionary

Jack seems to be acquiring new words all the time. He loves to walk, run and talk a lot! It's amazing what he understands. Yesterday we were heading to the park and Daddy was going to stay behind to make dinner. I asked Jack if he wanted to go bye-bye. He said, "bah-bah" and then followed me, like a little duckling to the door. I told him to first go and give Daddy a kiss goodbye and he turned around, went up to Paul and planted one on him.

Anyway, it is so cool to see him now start to vocalize some of the things he understands.

Words he knows without prompting: Mommy, Daddy, Poppy, Nonny, banana, book, ball, no, car, toes (he walks up touches our feet and says "DOHs"), up, hot, hat, bubbles, baby, bye-bye, nose, doggie, apple, thank you, wow

Today, he was flipping through a book on numbers. Number 7 has bananas and he opened it and said, "NANA!" This is not new. However, he then flipped to the next picture with 8 dogs on it and said "Dod" (dog). Then he flipped to the 9 ducks and said "dah". I don't know if it meant duck but it was cool anyway. Then he flipped to 10 eggs. I said egg and he repeated it. Then he shut the book and did it all by himself: "Nana! Dod!, Duh, Egg". I couldn't believe it so I kept making him do it. Then he thought that everything was "egg" because I made such a big deal about it. So I am not sure I can count that as a 100% word for him. But he is doing a lot of repeating in general. Yesterday, I told him that the diaper pail was yucky. "UCK!" he replied. He's like this little toy. My favorite toy ever!