"mmm, wff, eow"

Caleb is continuing to make progress talking. He's starting to try singing too. Today he did something so cool that I had never seen before. First off, I've been letting him go upstairs and play on his own. I go up and check on him every so often, just to be sure that he's not getting into anything he shouldn't. He's always up on the couch looking at his books or playing at the train table (I really couldn't ask for an easier kid). Anyways... today, he decided he was done playing downstairs and went up to play in his room- Grandma Walsh is visiting and has brought lots of new books from her library. After a little while, I went up to make sure he wasn't getting into trouble and as usual, he was looking at his books. I went to turn and go back downstairs and saw that he had picked up one of his books that had a picture of a cow, a dog, a rabbit and a cat on the back of it. I watched him look at the pictures and then say "mmm, wff, eow". Grandma Walsh and I now think this crazy boy is going to be reading before he's really talking.

He's also started trying to discipline himself. We've been working on getting him to stop throwing his toys. This is something he does mostly out of frustration and with Sadie starting to crawl around more and more on the floor, it really needs to stop. I've been doing time outs with him and those usually work pretty well but as we enter into the more rebellious twos we've had to try more consequences. First time I'll warn him and often try to redirect him. Then we get a two minute time out. Finally, sometimes when he's just not getting it, I've started smacking his fingers- a small swat on the hand that did the throwing. This has been working and it isn't often that I have to do that. Andy was watching Caleb the other day and saw him throw a toy so he gave him a warning. Caleb turned and looked at him and then hit his own hand and then went to sit in his time out spot.

Caleb also has some favorite songs now...

• Old MacDonald- he'll make the animal sounds if you ask him "what's a _____ say?"
• Itsy, Bitsy Spider- he tries to do the spider motions
• If Your Caleb and You Know it- a variation of "if your happy and you know it" he claps and stomps his feet and dances in between.
• It's Our Time to Sing Together- a kindermusic song
• The Wheels on the Bus- he does the motions for this song
  

Finally, I feel bad because I've been writing so much about Caleb but he's just doing so much right now and I'm trying very hard to keep a good record of his achievements especially since I've been so anxious for him to talk. But we're really excited that Sadie is trying so hard to stand on her own and pull up and crawl. She also clapped her hands together for the first time today. (No tapping the knees like her big brother did) She's getting better and better at feeding herself cheerios and fruit puffs and of course, she holds her bottle on her own and has started holding and drinking out of a sippy cup.

These two keep me so busy. It's nice having an extra pair of hands this week with Grandma Walsh.

God bless