Finger Bud

We had our first music class today, and it went well. Gabe did a really great job of listening and following directions, which made me very happy, as that's something he often, ahem, has a little bit of trouble with. Dante was actually a bit more shy and reserved than I thought he'd be, but I think after we've gone to one or two more classes, he'll open up a bit.

It was pretty funny, though - at one point, we were singing a song and she told us to all get up and march around the room, but Dante wanted nothing to do with that. So I grabbed Gabe's hand and we started walking, and I was figuring that Dante would get up and come running after us. Nope. He just laid there on the floor covering his head with his hands and sobbing. Needless to say, we sat out the rest of that march.

It was a fun class, though, and aside from Dante's refusal to march, both he and Gabe seemed to enjoy it. Their favorite part was at the end of class, when the teacher opened up a suitcase that contained maraccas, tambourines, bells, cymbals, and just about every musical noisemaker you could imagine, and just let the kids grab whatever they wanted and make noise. And make noise they did. It was complete chaos, but they were all having a blast, so it was fun.

A few random Gabe-isms -

Last night he was whining about wanting to go outside after dinner, so I told him that if he helped me clean up, we'd get outside faster. He was happy to help, so I gave him a sponge and asked him to wash the table, which he did (well, sort of). And when he was done, he came running over to give me the sponge, and said 'Thank you for my help!" 

As we pulled out of the garage the other morning, Gabe started bidding farewell to all the stuff in the garage. "Bye, stroller. Bye, bikes. Bye, lawnmower."  And he did the same thing when we were going upstairs for bed last night. "Bye, table. Bye, couch. Bye, toys."   He also has little conversations with the cats now. I heard him in our room tonight talking to Chloe. "Hi Chloe. Are you sleeping? I'm going to bed now, too."

Oh, I almost forgot - Dante said TWO new words today!  He was wearing a pair of socks that had Pooh Bear on them, and a few times during the day, I pointed out Pooh and repeated the word again and again, trying to get him to repeat it. And finally, during dinner, he was looking at his socks and he said, clear as day, "Pooh." 

And then, as if that wasn't enough, while we were brushing his teeth tonight, he looked at the picture of a train that's on his toothbrush and said "choo choo."

I'm soooooo happy and proud of him!!!!! Yay Dante!!!!!!

Something I've been meaning to jot down for a while is how Dante now, in addition to the pacifier he has in his mouth at naptime and bedtime, also likes to have a pacifier to hold onto. And we still have a few of the soothie pacifiers - the kind they give you in the hospital.

Well, the funny thing about the soothie pacifiers is that they have a hole that is perfectly sized for a toddler's finger, and Dante discovered this, and loves to stick the pacifier on his finger. And even funnier is that we call his pacifier his "bud," so when he has the soothie pacifier jammed down over his finger like that, we call it "finger bud." So now he's got his regular bud in his mouth, and his finger bud on his finger. And yes, I am thoroughly dreading the day we decide it's finally time to lose the bud, as he clearly has a very unhealthy addiction.

An accomplishment for Gabe this week, too - he seems to understand counting now. He's been able to count for a while now, in the sense that he was able to recite the numbers in the proper order. But if we asked him to count something (blocks, or something like that), he'd just kind of point randomly, and count for a minute, ending at a number that was usually not even close to the actual number of objects we had asked him to count. But yesterday, he was looking at the box from the Hot Wheels car track, and it had pictures of 5 different matchbox cars on it, and he looked at it and pointed to each picture in turn, appropriately counting "one, two, three, four, five." I'm pretty proud of him. I don't know if that's something he "should" be able to do by now or not, but I think it's great that he can!

Just two more things, then I have to devote my full attention to the Sox game.

Gabe loves to correct us now, if we say something inaccurate. Last week, Scott said something to Gabe about how he was going to go to art school on Friday morning. Gabe got very serious and said "No, Daddy, it's art CLASS."

And finally, the funniest moment of my entire day - this morning I told Gabe that we were going to be going to music class, and he was asking me about where it was and who would be there - normal questions. Then he said "Mommy, are you gonna rock out?"

I was laughing so hard, I couldn't even answer him.

Comments

[Javamom]

I love how you record all of this. :>)

You are right, twice a week in the pool at least to keep your touch. The swim coach I took the drills from said 4 times a week! EEK!