Mr. Manners & other updates
So now that Brandon is learning to sign words to us, he's been very cute about saying please and thank you. He signs "please" and says "tank ou" all the time now. He tells us when he is thirsty (signing "drink") and hungry (signing "eat") and can also ask for more now too. We are working on getting him to sign "all done" BEFORE he drops food on the floor, but that's a work in progress. This morning as we were getting ready to leave for work we had to stop and sit for a moment because he signed "book please" to me when we passed a new pop-up book from Aunt Sharon and Uncle Chris. How can I say no to that? We read the book and then left. Actually, that's a funny thing too - Brandon has gotten so good at saying "please" that he thinks he'll get what he wants just because he asks politely. So it's really hard to tell him "Thank you for asking nicely Brandon but you still can't have the (fill-in-the-blank: book, paper, pacifier, phone, remote, stuff you're not supposed to have)." The other day he got SO mad at me for telling him this that he immediately sat down on the floor and pouted - big lip and all. It was all I could do not to laugh.
We're very happy he's picking up the sign language so well. He rarely whines at us because he can communicate most of his necessary needs to us. I'm sure the whining will pick back up some day soon but for now we're doing ok!
A few other cute things:
Last week we went to the zoo and Brandon really enjoyed it. He finally was making connections with the animals. He LOVED the elephants and would sign the word for us while making the elephant sound (something he hasn't done independently since so I'm not recording it as officially learning/signing the word). He also loved the cat animals like the leopards, lions, panthers and jaguars. The funniest part of the day was when Brandon was running around near some giant fish tanks. He wanted to go back to the piranha (or some other fish equally as big and ugly) tank to look at them. So he ran up to it (also running away from Joby at the time), put his hands on the glass and then, suddenly a huge fish swam directly in front of the glass, maybe an inch from his face and just as quickly as he ran away from Joby, he was running back saying "ahhh!". Yeah, the fish startled the heck out of him.
Since the zoo Joby has also taught him the noise/motion the gorilla makes. And that is really funny to watch Brandon running around beating his fists on his chest and grunting. Sometimes he goes up to Joby and beats on Joby's chest too. Which is funny because when he first started signing "please" to us he'd actually come up to us and sign it on our chests, not his. It took him a while to figure out he could sign without using our bodies as the props.
And a final note - As reported a few posts ago, Brandon can open all the doors in our house that have french door handles now. So we had to install child locks on them. A couple weekends ago Joby spent Sat morning installing them on the doors (which involved taking the knobs off completely and putting the contraption on, then putting the knobs back on) and Brandon worked very hard to help Joby do this. But when Brandon realized that what Daddy was doing was preventing him from doing one of his most favorite activities, well, he got mad and sat down and cried. Now he spends his time looking for the doors we forget to lock on him, or opening and closing the laundry room and air handler closet doors. So yes, we need to buy locks for them now too. Especially the laundry room because Brandon also loves all things with buttons (phones, remotes, check out debit card machines, etc) and the fancy washer and dryer we own has the button controls all on the front. And yes, he's actually started the washing machine once. Luckily we can lock the controls... thanks to a genius designer who must have had kids.
