Ok, I remembered the other one. Can you
tell it’s a snow day and I have nowhere to go?

Letters
Along the lines of the alphabet, Lex has started pointing
out letters wherever we go. We pulled into the grocery store
parking lot yesterday, which is in a strip with a Borders
bookstore, and when I opened his door to get him out I hear him
saying “there’s an ‘o’, there’s a ‘r’, there’s a ‘d’, etc. I
presume he pointed out the “b” before I opened the door. He
also likes to sit at the table with me in the morning and
“read” the newspaper. He tends to prefer the advertising fliers
:) He’ll point out different letters (“s” in “sale” is common),
count the people, and point out different articles of clothing.
Today he got very excited about a baby in a blue hat. “There’s
a baby. Baby has blue hat. There’s hat.” Very excited. We were
in a waiting room the other day (for far too long, but that’s a
whole other story) and he kept bringing me magazines (Time,
Newsweek, Car & Driver, etc.) and he’d crawl up on my lap
and flip the pages. I’d say “can you find a ‘K’?” and he’d look
and look until he found it. Sometimes he’ll even find big
letters and little letters (caps and lowercase).

Anyway, Alan reminded me that all kids like to
point out objects that they know the names of (Lex used to love
flags and clocks), but I think it’s extra cool that the objects
he’s fixated on now are letters :)

Ok,
time to do something useful while he naps. Hmmm… does
knitting count as useful???

Since this is a baby book too, there are a
few milestones that I think I failed to mention lately.

Alphabet
Shortly after Christmas, at about 19 months, Lex started
singing the alphabet song. I think a lot of credit is due to
his LeapFrog Fridge Phonics toy. These
are great magnets (I got him the whole uppercase and lowercase
alphabet) with a reader. You place a letter in the reader and
it sings tells you the name of the letter, what sounds the
letter makes, and then sings a little song. He loves it. It
also has a button that plays the whole alphabet song. At about
19 month he was walking around the house singing the alphabet.
I also make his teething biscuits in the shape of letters, so
when he gets a biscuit he’ll tell me the letter, often the
sound, then find the letter on the fridge and put it in the
player. So smart!

Books
For awhile now we’ve had a rule that Lex has to put his
books back on the shelf after he reads them. He’s pretty good
about it and it really helps keep the mess under control. He
was never able to put them back vertically, but he always makes
a pile on an empty shelf. Lately though, our bookshelf seems to
be getting smaller and smaller as the book collection grows…
this has made it more difficult for him to find a horizontal
surface to put the books away. I just noticed this week that he
has started putting the books back vertically. He’ll look for a
slot at one end of the shelf or the other, or somewhere in
between, and slide his books in. I think this is a great new
skill.

Eating
Lex gave up his highchair a few weeks ago in favor of a
booster seat at the big table. This was very convenient because
it happened right around the time I was babysitting Kaelen, who
needed the high chair. It was an unrelated event, but
conveniently timed. The table is a little messier because he
isn’t so contained, but it also has it’s benefits. Lex has
taken to eating what he wants and then, when he’s done, he’ll
push his plate and cup away and then push his chair away from
the table and ask to get down. Much, much nicer then his
previous method of trying to get his plate off the highchair
tray then crying because he can’t get the tray off of the high
chair to get himself down. So now he joins us at the table
every night to eat dinner. He still won’t eat what we’re eating
(usually), but he’ll sit with us and eat the things on his
plate that he likes. He’s such a kid now. It’s amazing.

Teeth
I think we’re on the down cycle of a teething burst. He
recently got all four of his eye teeth and spent mucho time
chewing on his hand and drooling like crazy. All that’s left
now is the 2yr molars. Then a few years off before they all
start falling out :)

Hmmm…. I thought
of another one last night (Lex had a fever, we were up *a lot*
late night), but I can’t remember it now. Oh well. I’ll try to
write it down when it comes to me.