Picking Food Up Off The Floor

The Boys

Andrew is getting really good at communicating and sometimes he even helps Bran. Today I was trying to get Bran to tell me what he wanted. I knew that he wanted more of his cheerios, but wanted him to say more or cheerios or something other than nah, nah. Drew looked at Bran and made the sign for more to him. Bran made a sound of acknowledgement and signed more. Later that day I was asking the boys to touch their heads, Drew touched his and when I asked Bran to do it he wouldn’t, so Drew touched his head for him!

Drew really likes to recite the letters of the alphabet with me. But the past 2 days he’s been getting stuck on what appears to be his favorite letter, “F”. I say “A”, he says “F”, I say “B”, she says “F”, until we get to “G”, then he repeats the correct letters until about “S” and then he’s bored and won’t do it anymore.

Bran has only jumped in once or twice when I do the alphabet with Drew and then only with 3-4 letters, he doesn’t seem interested. Today he was off playing by the back door by himself and I heard him start the alphabet. He got to “C”, then went back to “B”, then “A”, then said them all in order all the way to “H”! I guess maybe he was paying more attention than I thought!

Bran’s favorite book right now is a counting book. Each page has pictures of a different number of animals related to the sea all the way to 12. He can find the animals I ask him to find and then actually does a good job of counting them, if it’s not higher than 3. After 3 he just keeps tapping the page, until I stop counting. We have to read the book several times a day. It’s also becoming Drew’s favorite so we have some disputes over who gets to turn the page! Bran always seems to be the one to have a favorite book, then Drew starts to like it too. First it was Snuggle Puppy, then I Love You Through and Through, then Brown Bear or Polar Bear, then The Christmas Tree book, and now the counting book. I think Goodnight Moon fits in there somewhere too. The last 5 are still on the best reads list. As much as we read to the boys from the very beginning, they’re not big readers.

Yesterday we heard Bran counting. He was looking at a book with numbers in it and said one, two, three, while he pointed to the one and the seven! The book was upside down, so you could argue as Mike did that that seven upside down looked similar to a two! We’re reaching but what to do you expect, we’re parents!

The boys are starting to say lots of words. Drew almost always says thank you when you give him something and is getting better at using his words to say please rather than his sign. They’re also starting to repeat our words more. The biggest thing is that while they know the words, can say them, and I think even know when to use them, they don’t. They have to be prodded, or you have to say it first and they’ll repeat. For example if they want Milk, they can repeat Milk if you ask them “Do you want milk?”. But they won’t actually ask for it, instead they put their hands up to the counter and say “nah, nah, nah.” Which I confess drives me absolutely crazy, especially by the end of the day.
Once when we were going over what certain animals say I asked them, “what does mama say?” the first time the response was “no”. Jen do you remember telling me that Kylie also said that? Well they only said that once, now their response is often “grrrrrr”. Apparently I growl too much, maybe I should go back to saying no more often.

Posted under: Drew & Bran