Breaking the Rules

Ben's away on another business trip and had to leave midday to make it to the West Coast for training sessions tomorrow morning.  If I didn't want to show some cute video, he'd never know that I introduced Jonah to the world of couch cushions as toys...  Jonah's a pretty active kid and loves to go outside, but it was cold enough that I really wasn't in the mood to stand around and watch him push his tractor up and down the street (which he prefers over the snow).  Bad mama, I know.  I wanted to find something that would allow him to be a little more active while staying inside and figure it was as good of a time as any to introduce the couch cushions to him.

I'm not sure he realized what was going on at first as I piled the cushions up at the one of the room, but it didn't take him long at all to figure out what he could do with them:

After he crawled up and over them for a while, I decided to set some up like a tunnel, as he continues to love trains and thought it was a good opportunity for imaginative play.  Unfortunately, the best video of him going through the tunnel is rather fuzzy (what I did wrong with the iPhone is beyond me): 

He also enjoyed sitting on the couch and discovering the stuff I need to vacuum up, had a bit of a fit when he knocked over his tunnel as it needed to be recreated ASAP, and he enjoyed pulling on the zipper on one of the cushions to see what was inside.

I have a feeling we have much more of this in store.  After dinner, he walked up to the couch on several occasions, touched the cushions, and said, "off."  As he is easily distractable, we didn't do any more cushion play today, but I look forward to building forts and having more creative fun!

Punch buggy blue!

While I was out playing with Jonah in the snow yesterday, a VW Beetle drove by. Jonah did his usual point and said "car!" I saw it as a teaching opportunity.

Michelle and I have always had our own way of playing the VW Beetle game. We always played it as "Punch Buggy, no returns!" when you see a Beetle, but she grew up saying "Slug Bug, no retaliation!" Here I started to teach Jonah the "proper way" to play the game. :)



Which way do you play?

Writing Thank Yous

Michelle was feeling pretty ambitious about getting some assistance from Jonah with thank you cards this year. I thought it seemed like a good idea, and it started off pretty well!

Here you can see Jonah adding his touch to a thank you card, including picking colors. We got him to say "thank you" at the end, also.



Unfortunately, that was the only card we were able to get his help on. We aren't going to say here who gets this one because we don't want to make everyone else jealous, so please keep it to yourself! :)

Please, thank you, and other words

What a difference a year makes! When 2011 started, Jonah was working on sitting up on his own on a regular basis. As we roll into 2012, he walks, talks, and knows how to unlock the dishwasher and open the door. If only he could reach to put the dishes away!

We already knew Jonah could recognize words and was saying some words (Michelle recently wrote on his growing understanding of colors), but in the past few weeks, he has really started to use words and to better understand the meaning behind them. He still has some of the "mine" and "no" in him, but we are encouraging him to use his words to better communicate what he wants, and to ask when he wants something instead of just saying "mine!"

With this in mind, he is learning to say please with things. He is especially cute because he signs with it when he says it, but sometimes using both hands (which is closer to "bath" in sign language). We used to have to say "More what?" or "Up what?" to squeeze the "pleash (please)" out of him, but he is starting to put the words together on his own with greater frequency. 

His requests themselves are becoming a little more accurate, too (except when it comes to food - he still thinks we are fishing for a "please" when we ask him what he would like "more" of...). He asks to "read please" or to turn a light or toy "on please" or to "open please" or "mik (milk) please." The request for turning a toy on is actually pretty rare, because one of the first things he does with any toy seems to be to figure out how to turn it on and off. He has a new toy where a knob sticks a little, though, so he has some trouble with it.

Even more fun, especially during Christmas-time, was that he started to learn "thank you." It was just something where one of us said "Can you say thank you, Jonah?" and he shocked us by actually doing it! With this new found word, he was able to personally thank everyone for his Christmas gifts. Sometimes he even surprises us by using it on his own without prompting when a request has been filled for "more" or "up." Sure, it comes out more like "dangkyu," but its meaning is certainly clear.

A grateful little guy

On top of the polite words, Jonah is also starting try some larger words. Usually this is just repeating us, but it is so cute to see him working on words like "alligator" (as part of an Eric Carle animal flash card set or the Nuchi animal train set his Auntie Julie got him for Christmas).

One of our new favorites, though, is a simple word: "yeah." We used to ask what book he wants to read and go through a stack. He would say no, no, no... until we got to the one he wanted, and he would just grab it. Now he says, "yeah!" We can also ask him things like "do you need a diaper change?" or "do you want some milk?" and he will say "yeah."

One of my favorite uses so far was tonight. After reading a bedtime story, I told him "I had a really good day with you today, Jonah. Did you have a good day?"

Snuggling his head into my shoulder, he said "Yeah!"

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).