An Eye for Color

We discovered earlier this month that Jonah does pretty well now in identifying the basic colors.  One night we were in the living room and Jonah was at his easel playing around with his crayons. (For a time, his favorite activity was to move the crayons - at that time part of a set of 48 - from the bin on the right to the bin on the left and then back again. After he tired of that activity, he discovered the fun in picking them out of the bins, going to the side of the easel, and dropping them over the support on the side of the easel - a great way to break crayons!)  One of us randomly asked Jonah to bring us a crayon of a particular color, and he did so successfully, which of course, caused us to continue to test his ability to bring us the correct color.  And he did remarkably well, when he stayed focused on the task at hand.  Here are a couple of videos from the early part of the month (I think he's gotten better in the time since then):






Overall, Jonah does remarkably well for his age (in my humble opinion) in pointing to the correct color when asked, though he does tire of the game at times and clearly starts guessing or just messing around, so we try not to quiz him too much.

While we were in Ohio, he enjoyed pointing to Grandma and Grandpa Gregg's Christmas tree, verbalizing the names of the different colors of lights and ornaments. At one point while at his cousins' house, he enjoyed naming the colors on Grant's chore chart, and he's started to randomly tell us colors out of the blue while we are in the midst of playing. More often than not, however, if we ask him to specifically tell us what color something is, he answers with "een" or "grnnn" (his attempt to say green). It seems that most of the time, he is more successful at stating the correct color when it is of his own prompting than when we initiate the "game." 

A book we discovered at the library last month and gave to Jonah for Christmas helps marry his current interest in colors with his love of trains: Freight Train by Donald Crews.

I find it amazing that my little guy - who just a year ago was figuring out how to sit on his own - can now identify colors!  Both frightening and amazing all at the same time!

Poop!

Don't worry! There are no pictures for this post (in case you were concerned after seeing the title).

Jonah's vocabulary and ability to communicate is consistently amazing us these days. We will do another post on more, but I thought I would do a quick post because one thing he's communicated that has really stood out is letting us know when he, well... poops.

We need to figure out how to get him to let us know before he does it, but now he lets us know when he's filled his pants with a very resounding "Poop!" while pointing at his bottom. Of course, when we ask him if he would like his diaper changed, he responds with "No!"

Seems like potty training won't be too far around the corner!

Drag-doe (Tractor)

Jonah continues to be fascinated by anything with wheels. The first words out of his mouth most mornings seems to be "choo choo!" While we were in Ohio for Christmas, though, his interest in tractors grew.

From the first night we arrived, he would point to Grandpa Gregg's tractor Christmas ornaments and say "drag-doe!" It became a common occurrence throughout the visit. Sometimes it seemed Jonah was even seeing imaginary drag-does.

His interest certainly grew when he got his very first tractor ride with Grandpa on Christmas Eve. Despite the cold, it was warm enough to get out on Grandpa's 1942 Farmall B-N. Of course, the paparazzi (AKA Mommy and Daddy), were there in full force.

Jonah enjoying a tractor ride with Grandpa

Jonah seemed to have a really good time and even did a little steering.

"Hold on tight, Grandpa! When this thing hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious stuff!"

Steering! (sort of...)

Michelle got some great video of the experience, too, capturing Jonah trying to steer, sticking out his tongue, and waving. Unfortunately, I got in the way a couple times.



Later in the visit, Jonah got to ride with Grandpa on his Cub Cadet (maybe a 1974ish model for those keeping track) and his skid loader (Gehl).

On the Cub Cadet with Grandpa

On the loader

He even got to ride on the B-N with me for a bit, though we didn't get any pictures of that. That is probably a good thing, though, because I forgot that there isn't a gas pedal on the tractor... there are two brake pedals, one for the left and one for the right. I couldn't figure out why the tractor didn't want to go when I pushed the gas! :)

Jonah didn't get any more rides on the tractors after that, but he did get to sit on one more before we left. He also spent plenty of time looking at the tractor ornaments inside when he wasn't able to see the real thing outside.

All smiles to be on a tractor!

More pictures and videos from the tractor rides and the rest of our trip to Ohio for Christmas are available on our family photo site (Note: the videos are on the last page rather than being mixed in for some reason).

Santa Claus

We took Jonah to see Santa at the Brookfield Square Mall on the Monday after Thanksgiving so that Grammy Sweets could join us. One benefit of going so early was that there really wasn't any line to see Santa and we were able to get through quickly.  We weren't certain how Jonah would handle Santa; he generally is pretty good with strangers, but we know this is also the period when kids generally start to freak out at seeing Santa.

The photographer explained to us a strategy that really worked well. She told us not to "introduce" Jonah to Santa, but to instead walk up, plop him down in Santa's lap, step back so that she could get a picture (using an Elmo toy and encouragement from us), and then we could introduce him to Santa after that.  The strategy worked pretty well.  Jonah didn't cry, but most of the time he sat on Santa's lap, he had a pretty serious look on his face. In the end, we got the following photo that makes it look like he was snuggling into Santa's arm, but I think he was more reacting to the toys he was being entertained with.

Don't I look like I'm snuggling with Santa?

Just because one experience with Santa worked well doesn't mean that a second will.  On a Friday earlier this month, Santa made an appearance at the Marquette Child Care Center, where Jonah's reaction was slightly different:

To his credit, Jonah did actually get on Santa's lap.  Apparently few of the kids in his room made it that close to Santa and instead freaked out and cried before they could even sit on his lap.

Last year, Jonah enjoyed Santa pretty well:

How much Jonah has changed in the past year and how much he will change before next Christmas! At this point, Jonah can identify Santa, but doesn't identify him as someone who brings presents to children for Christmas day. I wonder what he will ask Santa for next year??

Merry Christmas!

May your holidays be bright and merry. Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2012!

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Clearing snow

Over the summer, Michelle made a good pickup at Goodwill: a John Deere tractor for Jonah. We started him practicing early with it when there was nothing to push. He was just starting to walk at that point, so it was great walking practice.

This fall, he had the opportunity to try it with some leaves while I was raking:

The real test came with the dusting of snow we got over this last weekend. It wasn't much, but there was some snow for Jonah to experience:

We need to practice emptying the plow. :)

Unfortunately, we cut his time short with the plow because he kept getting up too much speed before hitting the splits between the sections of driveway (like the one he is stuck at one in the beginning of this video) and sidewalk, thereby stopping the tractor much faster than he could stop. After a couple crashes, we figured it was time to move back inside. Did he do that on purpose to get out of work??? 

What we've got here is a failure to communicate

Poor Jonah. He knows what he wants and is very vocal about it, but he still cannot figure out how to communicate all of his wants and needs with us.  We've taught him a bit of sign language, but as they don't use it at day care, we figured there wasn't a lot of value in introducing a lot of signs that likely would not be reinforced. Perhaps we need to revisit this decision, as we seem to have more and more communication issues of late, and Jonah seems to be struggling to understand the difference between "yes" and "no" and other terms and phrases (perhaps he's also having trouble making up his mind too).

Here's an example Ben used recently to illustrate one of our challenges:

Us: "Do you want this grape, Jonah?"
Jonah: "No!"
Take it away. Jonah: "Mine!"

Jonah (pushing his plate): "All done!"
As soon as it is out of his reach: "Miiiiiiiiiiiine!"

I don't know what tantrums will look like as Jonah moves past his second birthday (can this qualify as "terrible twos" right now?), but I somewhat shudder in anticipation. We have had some pretty serious tantrums and meltdowns in the last 6 weeks or so, with one of the worst coming yesterday morning as we were simply getting up and getting around for work. He seemed to be particularly in need of his Terrific Trains book and Ben read it to him after getting him dressed.  The only way we managed to get Jonah to calm down for breakfast (major crying and thrashing while trying to get him strapped into his seat) was by reading it to him while he sat in my lap and feeding him his oatmeal at the same time. These are not strategies we normally employ, as we don't want to encourage the behavior, but it has seemed to be particularly strong of late. Perhaps it is teething, a cold, or something else that is exacerbating his behavior.

For those of you who think he's the sweetest little guy ever (and he is, most days), here's a sample of one very minor episode from a couple of weeks ago:




I know patience is supposedly a virtue and one that I need some help with at times; Jonah is certainly helping me on this front!

Splashing it up at the Domes

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we paid a visit to the Mitchell Domes to check out the holiday setup in the special events dome and to give Jonah some opportunities to go "outside(!)" without actually being outside.

First stop was the "holiday dome." The setup this year was disappointing in comparison to previous years. It was pretty much a lot of poinsettias with a little bridge and a couple Christmas trees. It was nice enough, but it felt a lot more barren that past setups.

Holiday Dome 2011

We made the mistake of bringing in the stroller for Jonah. Once we pulled him out of it, all he wanted to do was push it!

"I don't need anything but this stroller to have a good time!"

We hid the stroller behind a coat rack when we left the holiday dome.

They had an old time sleigh, but it was tough to get Jonah to sit.

We couldn't get Jonah to sit by this Santa, either.

Ho Ho Ho!

I suppose I can't blame him...

In the Arid dome, there was a big ball hanging from the ceiling that captured Jonah's attention for the most part.

The best part of the visit, though, was in the Tropical dome after Jonah had his snack. There was a puddle on the ground, and he had some fun splashing around in it. Michelle was able to capture a little video.




More pictures are posted to our family photo site.

Thanksgiving with Grammy Sweets

This year for Thanksgiving, we decided to host Thanksgiving. Only Grammy Sweets was able to make the trip out. She arrived on Thanksgiving day and stayed until the next Tuesday.

Jonah is completely enamored of a series of books, The Amazing Machines Truckload of Fun by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker. He is very persistent when it comes to reading these books, and Grammy quickly got roped into some. His current favorite is Terrific Trains, but he will select one by having us go through each of the options, one by one until he agrees to one.

Grammy reads a book to Jonah not long after arriving for Thanksgiving.

We didn't get a picture of the full Thanksgiving spread, but there was plenty of food for all. Jonah had a plate with a little of everything, but didn't try much. It turns out that he wasn't feeling well, so his appetite wasn't very big.

"This stuff was fun to move around on my plate!"

We did some painting with Jonah, but Grammy got some good video to go along with some pictures we got, so that will be a post of its own. Here's a photo to hold you over.

"Painting is fun!"

There was plenty more story time, too.

"C'mon! Can't I enjoy a story in peace?"

We also made a trip to the Mitchell Domes. That will also have a post of its own, including some more video.

Before Grammy left, Christmas came early for Jonah. It worked out well. Grammy got to open the Christmas presents she got him with him!

Opening presents with Grammy.

Pretending to be a present.

Landing airplanes!

Another highlight of the weekend was going to Candy Cane Lane to see all the Christmas lights. When he sees Christmas lights that catch his eye, Jonah says "Lights! Lights!" to let us know. When we got there, we pulled Jonah out of his car seat, and he sat in Mommy's lap for the slow drive through the neighborhood. He was completely mesmerized by the lights, and afterwards he was in a VERY good mood.

It was a great visit!

More pictures from the weekend are posted to our family photo site.

Big shoes to fill

Jonah has been a bit obsessed with shoes lately. He's taken to taking off a shoe partway through dinner for some reason a couple nights this week. If he finds shoes around the house, he says "shoes!" and brings them to us.

Tonight, he brought a pair of my shoes to me, but something was different. He wouldn't put them back. I finally figured out what. He wanted to wear them. After a couple of attempts getting in and out of them, he attempted to walk in them. Here are the results:

Mommy's Little Monster

I don't want to be a monster!

Jonah is still too young to have an opinion about how he wanted to dress up for Halloween, so Ben and I had some discussion about how to dress him and what we wanted to spend on a costume. At some point, I hope to sew costumes for Jonah, but as I was uninspired this year (and lacked direction from Jonah himself), we opted to purchase one.

We found a great Dumbo costume at a used clothing store and were happy with the price ($6.50), but discovered when we arrived home that the size listed on the price tag (18-months) was not the actual size (18-24 months).  Normally, we would have paid closer attention to the label in the outfit itself, but we had been out for a bit and were reaching the end of Jonah's limits in terms of his patience. He is still a pretty little guy and can wear some of his 12-month clothes, so there was no way that a 24-month costume was going to fit him!

After a period of indecision, I finally decided to order a cute monster costume for him and I felt better about the decision when I discovered that Amazon sold the costume for less than a number of other catalogs and retailers.  It's amazing how much people pay for a costume that kids will wear for an hour or less! The costume arrived just in time - two days before our neighborhood trick-or-treat - and I didn't bother trying it on Jonah in advance, in part because I knew he wouldn't likely enjoy the experience.  In hindsight, that was a mistake for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the lining in the costume had a twist in it, so it made it even more uncomfortable for him to wear and I didn't discover this until it was "go" time.

After an initial period of tears and unhappiness, Jonah got used to the costume, and I took him to the homes of a few neighbors while Ben stayed home and manned the candy station at our door. Fortunately, Jonah still doesn't realize what candy is, so we didn't have to deal with any sugar highs and the like.  After visiting our neighbors, we came back to our house and let Jonah play for a bit while wearing his costume.  We hoped that he might get a bit more comfortable with it, as they were planning to wear their costumes for a parade on Halloween at day care and we hoped he wouldn't pitch too big of a fit for them.  Eventually, he got somewhat comfortable with it, at least enough to enjoy playing with his truck and reading his favorite book.

Is there a Monster at the End of this Book? (Thanks to Amy for reminding me about that book!)

How much is that monster in the window?

Mommy's little monster

The Marquette Child Care Center has a tradition of having the children dress in their costumes and parading down Wisconsin Avenue. It's a fun time and I appreciate the extra effort they have to go to now that they are in their new location and a bit further from campus.  Miss Lillie and Miss Linda said Jonah didn't have any problems getting into his costume, so I guess the trick-or-treat night fits got him past it (or perhaps it was peer pressure at play already?).  It was so much fun to wait outside the library at work and see the kids come by. Here's Jonah with some of his classmates in the buggy (impossible to get all four of them at the same time):

Jonah with his friends Aurora, Liam, and Hazel.

Jonah's other classmates, Eva and Faisal.

 After the parade, we joined Jonah for lunch and a "harvest festival" party thrown by his teachers. Jonah experienced eating corn from a cob for the first time (I didn't feed it to him over the summer because it was always too hot, just coming out of the boiling water).  It looks like we haven't posted those pictures yet, but watch for them on the phanfare site.

It'll be interesting to see how Jonah's concept of Halloween and trick-or-treat change by next year.  Will he have opinions about what he wears?  Will he insist on having some candy?  We're looking forward to finding out!

Oh No!!

Michelle is away at quilt retreat for the weekend, and I was away from home last night for work, so I don't know exactly when Jonah learned/started doing this, but when I was getting the wash cloth to clean him up from dinner tonight, I heard "Oh no!" from the other room and looked out to see him with his hands on his face in a little "oh no" pose. I assume this is something they did in day care, and it became our favorite thing of the night. I tried to capture some pics and later tried to get some video because he kept doing it, but I missed all the really good times he said it. Here are some shots and a little video, though.

Oh no!

Oh no!

Right after this, he asked me to turn on the little pumpkin he pulled off the arm of the sofa... "On??" I wish I had still been recording... sigh...

I also found out the possible reason for the "oh nos" in the video when I picked him up... diaper change time...

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

It's been SO cool to hear Jonah begin to talk. He struggles at times to get his ideas across, but he points to help illustrate his point (or pushes on your legs until you move to do what he wants) and he chatters quite a bit. Right now, he pretty consistently says Dadda, Mamma, shoe, sock, ball, book, light ("lie"), eye, head, bye-bye, hi (hello), more, chair, spoon, car, choo-choo (for train), cheese, bath, bird, moon, sun, up, off, on, outside, uh-oh, hat, elbow, button, and more that I am sure I'm forgetting right now. 

At times, he gets stuck on a word for a couple of days; right now he is fascinated with the word button. Everything he sees that looks like it might be something you can push is a button (e.g. circles drawn on his sippy cup), and he notices all of the buttons on toys and even in picture books (such as the rocket ship one he received at cousin Grant's birthday party).  It is so clear and sounds so adult at times that it is just striking.  It hadn't occurred to me until last night that he might not be aware of another meaning of button, as a fastener.  We were sitting at the dinner table and he was going on about buttons, so I was able to capture this cute video:

We still use some sign language, and that's been an interesting adventure as well.  He has started using the sign for bath to mean both bath and please, so you have to use context to figure out what he might be talking about.  Usually, that's not a problem in the case of these two words.  At this point, I think I need to continue to build my own sign vocabulary some more to help him build his. It's a matter of finding the time and the right teaching opportunities.

We've also had our first instance of Jonah using a word incorrectly. He likes the word elbow and will say it again and again at times. If you ask him where his elbow is, he always grabs his wrist. I have a feeling we helped create this confusion, as we likely held his wrist while we used our other hand to point to or touch his elbow. The poor little guy didn't recognize that the point was in touching his elbow and not his wrist, so now he thinks that his wrist is his elbow! We're trying to correct that by showing him our own elbows and touching his without having to touch his wrist, but we have yet to make inroads.  Hopefully we can get some video of this too at some point in the near future.

He's starting to be able to match animal sounds with animals, though he's not too great at vocalizing the sounds himself.  Ask him what a lion says and he has that one down.  He can definitely say "meow," and "quack" (or a variation thereof) comes out at times.

He clearly understands much more than he communicates.  We can give him instructions involving multiple steps and he does pretty well in following them (e.g. go get the book and bring it to mommy, put the car in the back of the dump truck and push it around), and he knows and gets excited by certain phrases, such as, let's put on our coats so we can go outside, or let's wash our hands and get ready for dinner.

I wonder what he will learn and speak next?  He loves to look at books (current favorites are The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which we sometimes read up to 10 times a day, Raffi's The Wheels on the Bus, and the My First Superman Book) so who knows which words he'll pick up next.  I continue to be amazed at all he has learned in such a short time!

It's all happening at the zoo

We took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and our family membership to the Milwaukee County Zoo and headed there on the final day of Grandma and Grandpa Gregg's visit.  For the first time, we decided to check out the Northwestern Mutual Family Farm, which is supposed to give kids the chance to get up-close to farm animals and the like.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that they stop the animal presentations and close the goat yard at Labor Day.  It was October 10, well after Labor Day. Bummer. 

We did get to see a few cows, and they had a section set up with farm vehicles and the like that Jonah just loved:

Look at me! It's a red tractor, Grandpa Gregg!

Taking Grandma Gregg for a ride.

The milk truck is cool, but not nearly as cool as the tractor.

While the weather was quite nice, many of the animals were indoors.  We did get to see all of the beautiful giraffes (Jonah was more interested in the waterfall that is a part of their habitat),

and the rhino,

and the camel was fun to watch wade in the water.

We also enjoyed seeing the penguins, which we make a point to visit every time we are at the zoo, partially because they are a personal favorite of mine, and partially because they have so many of them and they are always doing something that is interesting for a toddler to see.

We got quite the show from an adult monkey playing with some babies, and saw pretty much all of the primate house as well.  One of the final stops was to visit the same statue that Jonah posed with on his first visit to the zoo, when he was all happy and excited about it.  This time around, he was not one bit interested in posing with the statue (my, how quickly things change)!

I don't want my picture with this guy (I'm talking about Grandpa G.)!

We left the zoo around noon, and not really a moment too soon, as Jonah was falling asleep on the way home.  After a failed attempt to eat lunch (too tired!), we just put him down for a nice, long nap.  It's so hard to gauge how long he can tolerate outings like this!

We certainly got our money's worth from our zoo pass in these last six months; it has to be one of the best values around.  I'm not sure whether we'll really go in the winter, but seeing as it doesn't really cost us anything more, perhaps a visit to some of the indoor exhibits will be worthwhile (and a good excuse to get out of the house).

This Old Tractor

During Grandma and Grandpa Gregg's visit, Jonah had the opportunity to go to his first tractor show, the Pioneer Farm Days in Oak Creek.  While Grandpa was the only adult with much enthusiasm for the tractors, we thought Jonah would enjoy seeing them - they have wheels, so of course they are awesome, right? - and Mom and I figured that the flea market and farmer's market would keep us occupied for a while. Unfortunately, we were wrong on the latter  assumption, but spent some time at the show before leaving Grandpa to his own devices for a couple of hours while we did reconnaissance for shopping in the area.

The lone picture of Jonah we took during the show. Bad us.

Grandpa in his element.

Mom, Jonah, and I spent some time watching the kiddie tractor pull and it brought back memories of my own participation in a few of those at the Findlay show and other ones Dad took us to while we were growing up. I do hope Jonah has a chance to pedal to a win when he is a little bigger! And the barrel train looked like something he'll enjoy too.

There were some cool things to see there, though I'll admit that I didn't really walk around to see much of the show. Ben took nearly all of the photos with an eye towards artsy, and I'm not going to bother with captions, as Grandpa Gregg will only scoff at my attempts to label them.  It's interesting, however, that most of the images he took seem to be of cars, not tractors.

P.S. I was trying to come up with a clever tractor-related title for this post.  Discovered a children's album called Crazy about Tractor Songs.  How is it I've never heard of this??? (Oh wait, it's John Deere. That explains it all!)

The Apple of My Eye

I'm woefully behind on blogging this month. There seem to have been just too many other things going on of late, but I'm going to do my best to get caught up in the coming days.  My apologies in advance for all of the posts coming in fits and starts; that just seem to be how things work of late.

We had the pleasure of a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Gregg earlier this month.  It's always nice to have them come out for nearly a week each October. The weather is almost always gorgeous and we have the opportunity to do some seasonal activities instead of being confined indoors all the time. During last year's visit, we went to Barthel Fruit Farm and picked out some pumpkins as a family; unfortunately, Ben was not able to join us this year.

It's amazing what a difference a year makes! A year ago, we skipped picking apples with Jonah due to the time constraints of our trip (I ended up nursing him while we were there anyways) and the other things on our docket for the weekend.  This year, I loaded him into the Kelty and had him "help" me pick apples. 

Holding onto my apple. I like taking bites, but not really eating them.

Snack break at the car.  Jonah was rather distracted (see below).

The main reason for Jonah's distraction.  Wheels, wheels, anything with wheels!!

And unlike last year, Jonah was able to walk around the pumpkin patch on his own accord.  He wasn't terribly interested in the pumpkins, though they tended to jump out at him, tripping him with their vines and roots.  He was much more interested in the freedom of walking, and walking, and walking throughout the patch.

What is this?

Look, a pumpkin! And a bunch of vines to trip me up!

I'll be cute and pose for just one picture (too bad Mommy didn't pick a cleaner pumpkin).

Grandpa, let me down. I want to walk around!

I fell down right next to this pumpkin.  Guess I'll check it out for a minute.

Walking the patch with Grandma Gregg.

We ended our visit in their store, where I picked up a bushel of pears to can and we attempted to get some photos of Jonah amongst the prepicked pumpkins next to the barn.  The results weren't quite as desired, as someone was not cooperative:

These pumpkins are a real obstacle course!

I do not want to sit on top of these pumpkins in this bin, Mommy!

Okay, maybe I'll stop crying for a few seconds.

The barn. I love this shot.

What a beautiful morning! Grandpa Gregg did his best to keep Jonah awake on the drive home from the farm, but it was a losing battle. (I was hoping to keep him awake until we made it home and had lunch.)  He was asleep within a few miles. Guess all that time outdoors was exhausting!