Toys, Puzzles, and Words

Jack is taking an interest, at last, in his toys. So many things he's had for six months - a pirate ship, for example, and various little toy cars and trains - he typically ignored, but no longer. Now he can sit with his pirate ship for 20 minutes, assembling the pieces of the mast, taking them apart, and assembling them again. He runs the trains across furniture, our legs, and Charlie's back (Charlie accepts it stoically, which is nice), saying "Wheeeeeeeee!" and "Choo-choo!" He finds a spot to sit -- recently on the slightly raised threshold between the kitchen and the sun roon -- and sits, then rolling his engines forward as far as they can go. He smiles and says "Wooooooooooooo!"

Then there are puzzles. It used to be that he would just spend time carrying the pieces around, or wrecking it as I assembled it. Now we assemble it together, and he sits patiently as I help him position pieces correctly, waiting to wreck it only AFTER I've completed it. He picks up pieces -- like the two halves of the penguin -- and says "Pengwin!" and then places them in the general vicinity of where they're supposed to go. Tonight he spent several minutes trying to properly put the polar bear head in place; it seems like only yesterday he was running around the house with it saying "Puh-bll"and considering throwing it into the bathtub or down the back stairs.

This brings us to words, and the way his mother beams with pride over what our doctor told us yesterday at his 18-month (sigh...) appointment. "He's very advanced verbally." (Pause to beam with pride myself.) And it's true; Jack probably knows even more words than he uses, or at least, he connects a lot of words with things, and knows a lot more words that he might not necessarily associate with things -- but he's getting there. In the morning, he wants cereal, banana, juice. He likes "booty," which, er, is a "healthy" snack food, Pirate's Booty, which is basically popcorn (um, but healthy). He wants "My milk," and can say please ("Peas!") and thank you ("Atchoo!"). He'll repeat things back to us, immediately, which has us watching our language more than ever. In the bath tonight he asked for his duck ("My duck!"), noticed the faucet protector ("Big duck!"), and requested I get his seagull out of the net hanging on the shower wall ("Seagull!"). So, yeah, he knows a lot of words, even if he doesn't always pronounce them correctly. If I'm not careful, I might slip into his language on occasion myself.

Like saying "nigh-nigh, and atchoo for reading."