Jack reads his favorite book

The past few weeks I've noticed that Jack prefers grabbing some books from me and "reading" them to me himself.  Obviously he has just memorized them but it is so damn adorable.  He has this series of Mo Willems books that he absolutely adores and I finally caught him on video on day reading "I Broke My Trunk".

I assume this very long 2 1/2 minute video is solely entertaining to grandparents but I'll let you make the call.  :)

 

Letters and Reading

It's no secret that Jack is obsessed with letters.  In his bath every night he lines up all his letters in order and spells words and sings the alphabet song.  Not sure if, based on the photo above, he's a genius Type A nerd or a serial killer.  :)

What's really great though is that he's sort of starting to "read".  I mean, I put it in quotes because it's really just memorizing sight words at this point.  But he certainly seems to be able to read a lot of words.  I write them on his magna-doodle and he reads them to me.  

Or when we are reading a book, he will point out the words he knows.  For posterity's sake, I figured I'd list all the ones he can read right now so that when he's 10, I can look back and see how he was doing at 22 months.  :)  So far he can read:

Jack

hello

hi

bye

go

stop

up

no

on

in

zoo

fox

dog

cat

frog

sun

fun

book

hat

you

Pepe

pasta

And I think he's pretty much got:

owl

cow

bus

pig

tree

duck

It's all pretty exciting.  So proud of my little guy!

Week in Review - 11/10/12

 

Another week filled with fun, joy, tears, amazement, tantrums, ups and downs. :) I guess that's life with a toddler. On the plus side, his alphabet and reading skills are growing by leaps and bounds and it's so cool to see. He is constantly singing the ABC song and spends a lot of time playing quietly with his letters each day.

  

I swear I didn't help him with this...or even ask him to spell his name.

Grandma was up visiting and he made sure that she knew how to write all her letters too.

  

I think the thing that amazes me most is his new trick with books. Not really a trick but, somehow, in the last 20 months after reading book after book literally hundreds of times, he seems to have memorized most of them. I mean, duh, I guess. But still. Now I catch him sitting by himself with a book "reading" out loud. Hitting the key words and doing all the inflections. And when we're reading together, he'll help me out with the first word or two of every page. It's adorable. And so awesome! Guess he's really been listening for the past 1000 times I've read "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb".

  

My little nerd...

On the flip side, we're still working on his social skills. Man, this kid is not outgoing. He would so rather be home or play by himself. The exception is probably with his close two or three friends. He says their names and seems to look forward to seeing them. His friend Nick is super friendly and tries to give Jack hugs with varying success.

   

He also hangs with his tomboy girlfriend Mackenzie who's cool and ridiculously outgoing.

  

Before we get to the rest of the cute pictures, just a side note and thanks to my mom and leslie who let me get out for a few nights of fun. First was my friend Ali's premiere for the movie she produced. Check us out on the red carpet.

  

Felt pretty lucky to tag along with the producer to the after party and enjoy my free cocktails and reserved seating.

  

And the next night I was lucky enough to tag along with my sister to a screening of "Argo" which I really enjoyed. And it was fun to see a Q&A after with Affleck and some of the cast. Good times.

  

Okay, enough about me. Here are more pics from the week!

 

Finally we get to break out the pants and sweatshirts!

Deep in thought

His new favorite activity...RUNNING!

One key at a time, just like daddy taught him

playing the drum in his music class

catnap in the car at 8am because he won't sleep past 5

and spending quality time with the only friend he's truly excited about 

and affectionate towards...pepe the dog.

Week in Review - 10/27/12

 

That is one happy kid.  I guess rolling around on hard cold tile is more fun for a toddler than a 30 year old.  

I feel like we spent most of the this week reading.  We read while we eat meals.

 

He climbs in a chair and reads by himself while I'm doing chores.  

He climbs into bed with daddy and reads first thing in the morning.  

It's pretty much a punishment when I tell him we can't read any more.  All that reading though isn't very tiring.  So I have to exhaust him out with his other favorite activity - playing outside.  Jack's been consistently waking up between 5:15 and 5:45 every morning for like two months.  (pitch black and not that fun).  But for the last couple of days I've tried to take him to the park around 5pm to run him around and tire him out with the hope of a little later wake-up time.  It's worked a few times (yay for 6:30!) but it's definitely not a full-proof solution.  He does enjoy running and asks to "chase" with a "ready, set, go".  It's pretty cute.  

And of course there is jumping.  Always jumping.  He loves to jump.  "1, 2, 3!" he shouts.

John and I have gotten a little braver about taking him to restaurants (though only chain restaurants that are extremely kid friendly).  Guess what restaurants serve though with a kid meal?  Juice!  And not the watered-down junk that mommy gives him.  Real, sugary, potent juice.  Guess who drank a whole cup of it without taking a breath?

And now, more pics from the week!

"playing outside is fun mommy!"

mischievous little imp

climbing up on the fence

telescope at the zoo

hanging with daddy

me and my boy in matching grey hooded sweatshirts

I caught him reading again

Swinging never gets old

Leaps and Bounds

This post has been a long time coming and, truthfully, writing it is more of a record for me than anything.

Jack is over 19 months now and, at 17 months, we were worried about his lack of talking.  He hadn't said much of anything other than the occasional "pop" and "mama".  Then all of a sudden at 18 months his vocabulary exploded.  It's like he knew all the words (which, logically, I knew) but he decided it was time to show mom and dad what he could do before they threw him in speech therapy. Amazingly, he almost immediately, in probably the span of a week, went from saying one letter to all 26.  Actually, strike that...25.  He still can't say W but he can say the rest of them.  He points them out in street signs, he spells out every letter on the cover of books, and he loves writing them in chalk on the ground.  And he's working on being able to sign the whole alphabet.  The middle is still a little muddled but he's working on it...

The nerd alphabet kid also loves his numbers.  He's got 1 through 10 down pat and just today he seemed to have 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 down too.  

More than anything I'm just amazing at how much he LOVES books.  Like I am not exaggerating when I saw we spend hours every day reading books.  And he doesn't flip the pages impatiently or get bored.  He sits still ("couch!" "sit!") and watches and listens intently as I read a book.  The books are getting way longer with a lot more text.  It's also amazing that he's starting to learn how to spell some words...or at least sight words.  Like zoo, farm, pets, moo, etc.  So cool.  Lately, if it's a book he knows really well, he'll point out every single thing on the page...each animal, each tree, each flower.  I almost fell out of my chair last week when we picked up his baby color book and he proceeded to "read" it to me by telling me each color on the page and what the colored object was.  ("blue fish", "orange flower", "purple snail")

He definitely has some opinions when it comes to books.  He'll make me go through an entire pile, pushing the ones he doesn't want out of the way until I get to the one I want.  And the other morning at 6am he kept crying "buh-ee, buh-ee!" and I couldn't figure out what he wanted.  I went through the enormous stack of books in our family room but wasn't successful.  Finally I was like, "Bunny?" "Yes."  "You want the book Bobby Bunny?" "No."  "You want the book Runaway Bunny?" "Yes."  So I went and retrieved it from his room.  Crazy stubborn child.

So, what can I say, he's a reading nerd.  Not surprising considering how many books I devoured as a child.  And, just because he knows his alphabet and letters better than the other kids his age, I am by no means calling him a genius.  He's good at that stuff and the other kids are good at other stuff.  Things he can't do at all yet.  Blow bubbles, eat really well with a spoon without making a gigantic mess, be super social and say hello using kids' names.  Clearly everyone has their strength and Jack's is more academic and less social.  Yay for passing down your personality to your children!

And for posterity's sake, a few more things that he can do at 19 months:

- get excited and tell me if the stop light is red or green or orange (oops...damn kid, I thought you were smart.)
- command the automatic store doors to "open!" or "close!"
- notify me when we are driving up a hill - "up!!" or "down!"
- started understanding plurals and now will add an S to some things "two Ds", "three snakes"
- is pretty good about saying please when he is asking me for something.  still working on thank you.  

And let's end with another ABC video because he's so darn cute when he's trying to sing.

Reading is for nerds

And I think my son is a nerd. The kid is so into books. It's really fantastic. I mean, I was a crazy book nerd when I was a kid so I guess that makes sense. He will read books in the car sitting in his car seat. He loves going to Barnes and Noble and pulling every book off the book shelf. (That part actually isn't that awesome for me.)

But mainly, he just constantly wants to read when we're home. If we're not outside playing in dirt, he wants me to read him a book. He'll bring me book after book and hand them to me and pound on the cover, making it obvious that I need to start reading. At bedtime we read about 5 or 6 books...he'll tell me what order he wants to read them in by pointing at them. If a book is new to him and he's particularly intrigued by it, he'll have me read it literally 7, 8, 9 times in a row. I hope his interest in reading doesn't wan as he gets older. But I will have to start learning what books are good for school age boys! All I know are girl books like Nancy Drew, Babysitter's Club, and Sweet Valley Twins. :)

Turn the Page

So I realize that this picture is similar to Sunday's picture. Sorry. I am somewhat sleep deprived these days and trying to get some Christmas stuff done in the two hours between when I put Jack down and when I go to bed. So hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the blogging. Because I know that all 4 of my readers will be disappointed if I don't post things. :-)

Anyways, the big news lately is that our little guy has learned how to turn the page when we're reading a book. And not just crazily turn backward and forward and close the whole book. No, he really can listen to me read the page, wait for the pause, and then turn the page. It's pretty amazing. I say "turn the page" and BAM, it happens. I couldn't have imagined how crazy this whole "communication" thing would be. It really seems like a miracle when you start from scratch. 'Scratch' being a blob that can sit or stand or understand words. But he knows so many words now. Can't wait to see what he learns next.

Fall Cleaning

I had a very productive weekend and took advantage of some very lovely daddy and son time. While they played, I cleaned out my closet and, man, doesn't that always make you feel good? Lighter somehow. Jack really enjoyed climbing on top the mountain of hangers that piled up on our bed. And John was nice enough to watch the boy all afternoon yesterday while I read "The Hunger Games". I've had the book for months but hadn't had a chance to start it. After much prodding by friends who declared it "AMAZING", I decided to crack it open. 400 pages and 3 hours later I emailed my friends to tell them they were right. It was quite a good read. And a fast one. Now I can't wait for the movie next year. (Though I'm not sure about some of the casting....)

Hope you got a lot done this weekend too!

More Changes...

It's amazing how quickly things change once the ball starts rolling. I guess it was around when he started standing up that his progress started accelerating. So, in the interest of trying to remember when these things happen, I'm going to write a post about it.

As you can see in the video above, he is desperately trying to crawl. Though I think it's more that he's trying to stand. Nowadays when I try to hold him he squirms out of my arms because he wants to be on the ground. But not sitting on the ground, and not on his tummy...no, he wants to stand and walk. So I hold his hands and we stand. And walk. And walk. We walk around the living room, around the kitchen, around the background. He is delighted so it's really cute to see. What's not so cute is my excruciating back pain after so much time bending over. But soon he'll be walking on his own so I'll enjoy this.

I know I said he squirms out of my arms and that's the majority of the time. But he's also started to do this other thing once in a while which is like reach for me and just want to hug me. And, let me tell you, that is awesome. So so adorable.

But his latest move that I find absolutely amazing is that we'll walk around the room and he'll walk over to a book that's on the floor. Then he'll plop down in a sitting position and look up at me like, "now it's time to read mom!" So I read him the book and he smiles and giggles the whole time. And when we get to the end? He picks it up and urges me to read it again. It's just very rudimentary communication but I am in awe that we are actually communicating! And it's because he loves reading which is so great. (Though not surprising since I was such a book addict when I was a kid.) Can't wait to see what he does next!

Favorite Books

Jack really loves books which is so great. He can be in a bad mood and when I start to read a book he quiets down and pays attention. Every night his bedtime routine is basically the same. Dinner of some awesome pureed vegetables and fruits, then relaxing time outside next to the pool. Then it's inside to his nursery where we read the same 3 or 4 books every night. Next up is a bath, getting into pajamas, then some nursing, and straight to bed. We've been reading the same books for probably three months and he loves them. So I thought, for posterity's sake, I'd share them here. His favorite books at 7 months...

There's a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

Elmer's Colors by David McKee

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? by Dr. Seuss

Hand Hand Fingers Thumb by Al Perkins

Children's Books

Here's Jack with his current favorite book. Probably because it's just very basic black and white pictures of animals. High-contrast images and cute illustrations. The only writing on each page is "Hello, [insert animal name here]!" Makes it hard to really give it my all when I'm reading it to him, but I try to embellish a little. The thing I noticed today was the cover. And for some reason it struck me as hysterical. It says the book is "by" Smriti Prasadam and "illustrated by" Emily Bolam. Seeing as how the book is all pictures with only "hello leopard" and "hello dog" written over the illustrations, I'm thinking Smriti had a pretty easy time with this one.

Suspicious toys

So Jack is 4 weeks old and apparently we're supposed to start playing with toys with him. Just high contrasting colored toys. Seems a little early to me since he doesn't seem interested in anything but looking at our faces (besides breastfeeding, pooping, and spitting up). But we attempted it with his cute colorful friend "Elmer". An elephant character from an Italian/English series of kids books. (compliments of Ferrario and Swagner).

To me, he seemed at first oblivious and then suspicious. So not sure that's the desired effect...