Counting! And counting blessings.

Yesterday, I told Quint that if he ate two nuggets, then I would give him some strawberries. "Ok, Mama." So I made three nuggets and cut them all up into four pieces. So he had twelve pieces on his plate. As I set it down in front of him, I said again, "Ok, you need to eat two whole nuggets to get strawberries. That's eight of these little pieces." "Ok, Mama."

In a short amount of time, he said with a full mouth, "I ate two nuggets, Mama!" I went over and counted the remaining pieces. Sure enough, there were only four left! He had eaten exactly eight. So at the very least, the boy can count! And if we really wanted to stretch it, we could say that he understood some pre-algebra concepts of one nugget equals four pieces, two nuggets equals eight pieces, twelve minus four is eight, and so forth...

But I had further confirmation today that he understands counting quantities (as opposed to simply saying the numbers in the correct order). He was playing in the other room, and brought me a curvy string of magneatos. He said, "I made a seven!!" This curvy thing looked more like an S, 5, 2 or Z depending what side you were on, but I stopped and counted them. There were seven! I told him very good and that I was proud of him and everything, and then said, "there are seven pieces, but what does it look like?" It rotated in his hand for a minute and he said with excited eyes, "A Five!!" Awesome!!

So I think that in the last couple days, his brain has put together that putting numbers in order is also how many there are! That may have never occurred to you that those are different, but I had seen evidence of that in my son for quite a while. Especially when he would "count" things starting at three. For a while there, he could count from one to three, and from three to eight, but not from one to eight. When he gets above ten, it's really cute. It's eleven, twelve, furfteen, furfteen, furfteen, sixteen, etc.

Elevators and escalators are still all alligators, and I just can't correct that one yet. He loves to go downtown and see the big buildings. Lately, he's been begging to go to the big zoo, or the real zoo. Instead of the pet store, or an online zoo. He really wants to ride an elephant and was really disappointed when I told him that they don't let kids ride elephants. They don't even let adults ride elephants.

He has also started a new level of pretend play in the last few days. He will pretend to be a dog and crawl around barking. Then he will slide around on the hardwoods on his belly, propelling himself by hands and toes, and say he is a turtle.

We've been working on small talk including "what's your name" and "how old are you". The full name thing is harder to teach than you'd think. "Hey George, what's your name?" - seems kinda silly. I'm trying to teach him his address and his parents' names. Yesterday at the store, when I had a lady ask him where he lived, he said, "at our house." Well, of course you do. "Where is your house? "Ooo Hope Meaduh" DARN CLOSE!!!

He is constant entertainment and only really frustrating for under 60 minutes per day.

Now Hank! Hank is moving around better and better each day. He will ooch, roll, and wiggle around the whole living room. He can crawl backwards a little bit, and gets really ticked off when he runs into a wall. I think he will start crawling any day now, but I'm hoping he will wait until my mom is in town next Saturday. Because he's always in footed sleepers, he stays on the carpet because he slides too much on the hardwoods. But he thinks belly sliding is fun on the hardwoods. I can totally see him learning to do a one person wheelbarrow move go get round on the hardwoods. He eats more than a cup of food at each meal, three times a day, with countless cheerios and chex mixed in for snacks along the way. He loves the magneatos and figured out that weebles are magnetic in the butt. He has just started drinking out of a sippy cup, and still does it best when he's laying down. Perhaps the full sippy cup is too heavy for him to lift high enough to drink from.

His first word was light, which he hasn't said again, but when I ask him, "where's the light?" he will look right at it and sometimes point. He has said "ba" to a ball, and frequently will say, "Mama" and then grin when I say, "yes, Hank?"