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Saturday, March 01, 2008

What I Learned Today

We spent most of yesterday watching it snow. Thankfully we didn't have anywhere we needed to be so we just enjoyed the beautiful snow from the warmth of our house. It was one of those great snows that sticks to the trees and just looks pretty. And it piled up on our patio table and reminded me once again that we never took the table up to the shed for the winter.


Today we stayed indoors again and Greg and I were dazzled by all the things that our kids know. As it turns out, Marcus recognizes some of this letters by sight. I know, he is a prodigy. He has this series of 26 books. Each book has a different letter on the front and the stories inside feature that letter. About a week ago I noticed Marcus pick up the book with the P on it and say, "P!" I thought it was just a coincidence. Just before nap today I was sitting on the floor with him with all the books around and started asking him what the different letters were. Throughout the day he consistently named A, B, D, E, G, M, O, P, Q, R, X, and Y. He got K and T sometimes and kept saying M when I would show him the N book. We tried to catch him on video showing off his skillz but apparently he was burned out by then.

Marcus is getting really close to putting words together too. He still just uses single words but I can just tell he is bursting with enthusiasm to get more information across. He will say things like, "Daddy" followed by a pause and then "Bye-bye" when he sees Greg leaving the room.

Apparently he knows the color purple too. We were playing with these different colored puff balls today and he kept pulling out the purple ones and saying, "Purple!" Tonight we were reading a book and the hippo in the book was purple. He kept saying the word purple so I asked him what was purple. He pointed to the hippo.

Oh! And more and more and more words too! He can now point to and say elbow, belly, and knee as well as point and say where on his body he puts his hat, shirt, mittens, diaper, pants, socks, and shoes. He can point to lots of other body parts too but hasn't quite figured out how to say the words yet.

William was dazzling us with all he has learned today as well. He points to his head and hair. He has also figured out how to tell us that he wants a drink. He goes over to the fridge, does the sign for help while patting the fridge or trying to pull the handle of the fridge open. He is starting to help us to put toys away at the end of the day when we tell him it is cleanup time. In general, he is starting to listen a little more to simple instructions which makes me confident that he is quickly picking up the English language. And everything and anything that could possibly even be the little bit amiss requires him to repeat over and over and over and over again, "Oh no!"

With our lunch today Marcus helped me make some instant pudding. I was feeding some to William and thought, let's see how he does on his own with this spoon. I loaded it up, handed it over, and he was as happy as could be! The first couple tries he had trouble getting all the pudding off the spoon but after he figured out how to turn the spoon over and lick off the pudding, he just wanted "more more more more".

I just hope that some day I don't get accused of being nicer to one of my sons than to the other. The first time we let Will use a utensil was to eat pudding. The first time we let Marcus use a utensil it was to eat broccoli.

(Picture of Marcus taken 7/07)

1 Comments:
At 4:55 PM, Blogger Melissa said...

I think it was wise that Grant and I didn't make the trip up on Friday! I'm glad you had a good day watching it snow (we did, too).

 

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