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!
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...
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!
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).
