Fox

We saw a fox at the park this weekend (part of the animal exhibits, not running wild), and Mattie was having a lot of fun saying "fox" over and over again. Then, one morning when we were back home, he said, "fox" and ran over to the table, pulled a book (Baby Bear, Baby Bear) out from the bottom of the stack, turned to the page with a fox on it, and pointed to the fox! I was very impressed with his memory!

Mattie knows that things in books are just pictures, but sometimes when he sees something really exciting -- like a mop or a radio -- he grabs at it like he's trying to pull it out into real life. It's very cute. And when he sees something he doesn't quite understand he goes back to it again and again. In the Going to Bed Book (by Sandra Boynton, one of our favorites), the moon appears in the window in the later pages of the book, but not the earlier ones (because the story takes place as it's getting dark). He keeps flipping back and forth between the pages pointing to the window and saying moon (and maybe "no moon" but it could be "da moon"), and I tried to explain to him that the moon only comes up at night and the moon wasn't there because it was still daytime. He didn't seem convinced (and it's been harder to make my case because the past few days the moon actually has been quite visible during the day here.)

Jamesie's recent words are bug ("buh", pointing to pictures of a ladybug) and puppy, and he repeated "bee" after I said it. As part of the Hearing Loss study he's in, we had to fill out a bunch of questionnaires, including one that has us indicate which words he's saying from a long list of common early words. I counted up and according to that list, he's saying 47 words! That seems pretty good to me!