Like Father, Like Son

Jonah takes after his Daddy in so many ways.

• The most obvious (to me) is his love of backrubs.  He will lie quietly and enjoy the rubs for as long as I'm willing to give them.  The moment I stop, the screaming starts.  As if ending a massage is the most terrible thing a mother could do.
• Jonah and Daddy love fruit and have an innate sense for detecting fruit nearby.  Jonah will scavenge almost any snack if he catches us nibbling, but he is particularly drawn to bananas, nectarines and strawberries.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Jonah Eats a Banana

Jonah and Daddy were out at the grocery store after school/work.  Jonah was a little hungry and flashed his "I'm hungry" signal by flapping his lip.  Signal received, so Daddy contemplated how to get him something to snack on - maybe a free cheese sample from the Deli?  In the meantime, he gave Jonah a banana to hold and play with.

Well wouldn't you know, Jonah played with the peel until he opened the end and started eating the banana!  With a little help from Daddy (so he wouldn't eat the peel) he downed the entire thing.  So much for all of Mommy's peeling and chopping of bite-sized pieces... Jonah can take care of it himself!  I am told they paid for the banana at checkout, but I can only imagine what the onlookers were thinking.

Infant Level: Passed

Jonah's teachers told us today that he is ready to graduate!  They have to keep him with infants until he turns 1, but then he'll be moving on to the toddler room.  (We were originally told the transition would occur at 15mo.)  While we like to think that our son is so far ahead of the curve that he is graduating early, some part of us wonders if the infant teachers are just eager to get rid of him!  It is quite possible he is terrorizing the smaller babies.  From what I've seen of him at playgroup and at family gatherings, Jonah isn't shy about taking his turn climbing a slide, even if another (older) child is already climbing up.  In one story we heard from his teachers, Jonah enjoyed going around the room and waking up the sleeping babies.  (These things are never put into the written record!)  Today, his daily report read that Jonah "enjoyed playing with his friends and then running away with toys in his hands."  Regardless of the reason, it is exciting that he is ready for the toddler room.  He will have to adjust to a rigorous schedule, but I think he will enjoy the new toys and older kids to play with!

Mommy's Helper

Jonah loves the dishwasher.  He climbs on the open door, slides the bottom drawer in and out, and pulls out forks.  This evening, he heard me loading dishes and came toddling over from clear across the house!

Jonah is also a big help with laundry.  He pulls diaper inserts out of the dryer for Mommy and thinks looking through the open dryer door is hilarious!  And now he's discovered the button that turns the dryer light off when the door closes.  So he stood there pressing it over and over, until he cried because his little finger hurt!  So he started using the pointer fingers from both hands.

The Doors on the Bus Open and Shut!

Jonah loves his 'Wheels on the Bus' pop-up book.  We had some wonderful quiet time this afternoon reading it together on Mommy's bed.  Jonah loves the sing-song rhythm and watching the pieces move.  He likes to grab both bus doors, one in each hand, to pull them open then slam them shut again.  Mommy works the pull tab in sync to prevent the mechanism from breaking.  Jonah saw me doing this and switched to pulling at the tab instead.  When he got the doors to pop open all by himself, he was so excited!  He lit up and squealed with delight.  I wish I could have captured that moment on video.  It was precious.

All Done!

Jonah loves making the sign "all done"!  He waves both hands in the air emphatically to let us know he is finished with dinner and wants to get out of this his high chair.  Then he started applying it to his swing.  And carseat.  And diaper changes.  And school.  In fact, Jonah has discovered the power of "all done" to communicate just about anything he doesn't want to be doing.  This evening at a friend's dinner party/game night Jonah stayed up late, mesmerized with watching the adults play charades.  (So that's what grown-ups do after 8 o'clock!)  When he had had enough he waved "all done!"  It's cuter to let everyone think he's waving good-bye.
I wish I could say that his use of all done extends only to appropriate situations, but Jonah seems to have forgotten "more" and signs "all done" when he is really wanting a second helping!

Cousin Nathan's Birthday Party!

Jonah was infatuated with watching his cousin, Nathan, open presents at his first birthday.  Jonah set his eyes (and hands) on a VTech car carrier, which lit up, made noise and had spinning gears all while still in the box.  A trifecta of fun!  We couldn't help but notice that by the end of gift-opening, Jonah had surreptitiously moved the truck across the room, as if he were taking it home with him!

At the party, Jonah enjoyed climbing up Nathan's pint-sized toddler slide... while Nathan was climbing up it. (It was far less fun when no one else was using it.)  It turned into a bit of a competition, though neither made it to the top without help.  Both could do the stair side pretty well, but I guess that isn't enough of a challenge.  :-)

Walking, Climbing and Bouncing

Jonah's walking has also come a long way.  He can walk across a room, but only when he wants to.  He can also stoop down to pick something up and get back to standing without pulling up on anything.  Wow.

Jonah has pretty much mastered climbing up the stairs at playgrounds.  He can get up onto a platform up to his waist height, with a lot of cute pulling, kicking and muscling.  He's even working on getting down on his belly and swinging his legs out behind him to go back down!  I still follow him everywhere at the playground, which I noticed are typically labeled for ages 2-12.  So I asked the parents of a few toddlers.  It seems that 18mo. is about the time that they let their kids loose and watched from the sidelines.  So maybe next spring I won't be crawling through tunnels to keep Jonah from falling down a climber or slide!  What a shame.  ;-)

Jonah is becoming far more of a swinging kid.  We return to the swings over and over on a single trip to the park.  Still, I think his favorite playground equipment are the bouncers.  We've seen a few varieties - the single animal/bike on a spring, the redesigned see-saws that bounce, and a 4-person hybrid (horses at the ends of two perpendicular see-saws joined at a central spring).  Like when he was younger, Jonah lights up only at a certain frequency and magnitude.  It's worth finding his sweet spot, because that kind of excited expression is rare for him (takes after Daddy!).

Trying out the local parks...

Davis' Farmland

It was just a little bit crazy. We met Jonah's grandparents, aunt, uncle & cousins and Mommy's aunt, uncle, cousins & kids at Davis' Farmland.  Daddy even took the day off from work!  9 adults and 6 kids.  Yikes!  It was a super fun day, petting the animals, splashing at the mining river and playing in the splash park.

I think Jonah enjoyed it most out of the whole group.  He wasn't afraid of any animals, though he preferred to stand close without actually touching most of them.  We saw lots of goats and sheep, a couple turtles, an emu, pig, and chickens.  Jonah really likes the "toddler" chickens, probably because he could relate.  He wasn't so interested in the baby chicks or adult hens.  Jonah decided the hay ride was the perfect time for a milk break, which was fine, since he couldn't get up close to the cows and horses anyway.  Silly Mommy had left the diaper bag on the stroller and was unprepared for discrete nursing, but there is no stopping a voracious Jonah!

 Jonah was super excited when we neared the splash park.  He kept pointing at the water and the kids and could barely contain himself long enough to change into his swimsuit.  Then he got up close and became a little timid near the water.  He enjoyed watching and when one of the sprays stopped, he would get all curious and go up to check out the nozzle... until... splash!  He didn't appreciate the surprise.  I was glad to find a "little kid" area, which was tamer and meant he could check it out at his own pace without getting run over by excited big kids.  We did venture into the larger area near to end, where we found water wheels that Jonah could spin - and would have kept spinning all day, had we let him!  I bet next year he runs around with reckless abandon.  :-)

After the farm adventure, we all had a cookout and celebrated Great-Grandma Lil's 82nd birthday! We even got a group photo of all 5 grandkids:  ;-)