Coins now have true meaning and value to Nick. We worked with him for months on the differences between the various coins, and he only ever called them coins. Then at the store, he says, "I need quarters for jelly beans." Jelly beans are the Skittles, or anything else, the store marketers place at the exits to usurp loose change from parents via their pleading children. Fortunately, we carry cheaper candy on us in case of such an emergency. But amazingly, he now knows the value of a quarter.There's no better place to play than the cemetery. I've been a visitor on occasion over the years to 'share a beer' with my grandfather, and I've not visited much since Nick was born. So I took him along, which he refers to as, 'have an eer' at, 'the flower garden.' It's actually pretty awesome: clean, quiet, a nice fountain, plenty of flowers for Nick to pretend to sniff and sneeze, and he collects 'Amerigo Flags' (his word for American Flags, which might even be more historically proper than what we call them) from the veteran's plots. (Yes, I put them all back right behind him!)
Sometimes he'll rattle off a paragraph like a CNN pundit, and other times the tongue twisters get the best of him. He gave up on, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." His shortened version is, "Goodnight bugs." And his made up words this month are: eye browns (brows), baloney (blowing) winds, and when things are ruined he calls them 'bruined' (between that and booing the Red Sox, I hope the poor kid never has to live in Boston or I will have wrecked his ability to conform to society.)
Favorite foods this month: string cheese, barbeque chips, and bagels (he eats them from the outside-in.)
The new game this month is Dominos, which he loves to stack and count and knock down. They're relatively enjoyable for the adult involved, except he loves the sound of the word, so he repeats it 500 times while he plays (like staccato DAH'-mi-nose). He also loves rolling the basketball across the fireplace step, trying not to hit any obstacles. His mother started this, and when I played the first time with him, he explained the rules to me ('Roll it; no hitting obstacles; there you go!) I'm just incredibly impressed with this language skills. He addresses me sometimes by my first and last name, which is a chuckle. He has unlimited energy, and once he starts running, can make laps through the house indefinitely.
He's been waking up in the night a little more lately. One night, when I went into his room at 3 AM, he was insistent we needed to go to the parade. I read him a short story as a compromise, then he started correcting me when I was reading it wrong in the dark (he had the words memorized.) Then the next night, he was in tears for two hours over the 'sparkleberry tree'. That's the only word I could understand through the sobbing, so I can't fix that, obviously. Turns out it's a sad story online from one of the videos he watches about two little airplanes saving a tree on some public television show. YouTube is warping him! He'll sit in front of the computer until you peel him away, clicking through videos for hours. Last night, I heard 'C is for Cookie' non-stop during two loads of laundry. I miss the old stuff, which was a little more interesting to adults. Remember the 'mystery box' with Kermit and Cookie? I always laugh when Cookie Monster says, "arrivederci, frog".
New pictures for Month 34 - click here. Picture above is from grandpa's garden, with pumpkins for Nick, and tomatoes. He decorated the punkins with marker for Halloween,
-Jason
