Bragging - Shapes

I need to take a few moments to brag about my boy. When LB was around 18 months old, he started to get really interested in puzzles. It isn't surprising since he loves to find things that are the same so matching the puzzle pieces with the pictures is a great activity for him. His favorite puzzle is a numbers one. The hard thing about the numbers puzzle is that you can't match it by a photo. You have to do it by the shape of the number. I know it is pretty common to think that your kid is smarter than the average bear but I was very impressed that he figured it out so quickly. Puzzle time is awesome for me because LB will actually sit still for a while. It's also been a great way to distract him when he is getting upset about something else. I will mention something about his puzzles and he will often forget about whatever it was that was making him mad.

He always likes to save the number 1 for last. I am not sure what that is about. He's all business when it is puzzle time.

We also worked a lot on a puzzle with shapes. When we first started doing it I tried to draw associations to some of the shapes. So I would point to the star and sing, "twinkle, twinkle little star." And I would point to the heart and tell him that hearts meant love and I would do the sign for love. I had no idea that he was actually absorbing this information. Sometimes I just talk to him in a teacher like way but assume the language is above his understanding. Well, a few weeks ago we were outside playing in the leaves. He pointed to the some of the leaves and did the sign for love. I had no idea what he was talking about. I kept asking him what was love and he would point to the leaves. I thought he had lost his mind. Finally, I got right at his eye level and realized that some of the leaves were sort of shaped liked hearts. Whoa. My kid is smarter than me.

Do you see the leaves in the bottom left corner of the photo? Those are the heart shaped ones.

A few days after the leaf incident we went to Macy's to buy some new towels. As we were walking up to the store LB starts doing the hand motions for "twinkle, twinkle" and I had no idea why he wanted to sing that all of a sudden. Until I saw the star next to Macy's. He notices way more than I do.

Okay, I'll stop bragging. And for a little balance I'll tell you a not so great story. This morning we went to the library for toddler time. It started out great. Then LB noticed another kid had a stuffed animal. He kept trying to steal it and I kept giving it back. I even tried moving to the other side of the room. Nope. LB only had eyes for that animal. He kept screaming every time I gave it back to the other kid. I told him he had to stop screaming or we were going bye-bye. What does he do? He shouts, "BYE!" to the entire room and walks over to the door. Awesome.