Email Update

Excerpt from an email I sent earlier this week:

As for our firstborn, Brandon is still amazing. He'll be 18 months old on Saturday. We think he's getting ready to grow taller. For the past five days he's done nothing but sign and say "eat" to us every other hour. We're not sure where he's putting it all either! He absolutely loves to read books, especially ones with Lowly the Worm (he goes around saying "lowly, low-la, low-le, lowly?!" when he wants to read this book), Elmo, Big Bird and anything with animals in it. We find his recall ability quite amazing. We show him a picture in book just a couple times and he can find it for us later if we ask. And someone can tell him something a couple times and he figures out how to say it or sign it. It's been really, really fun watching him learn and apply what he knows. Thank goodness for sign language too. It's been so helpful to know when things hurt or if he's hungry or thirsty or something like that. Please and thank you are also perks at this young age too!

B also loves to sing. Joby got this one children's album by They Might Be Giants called "No!" and has been singing this song about a violin to him. Well in one of Brandon's book there is a picture of a violin and whenever he finds that picture now he'll point to it and look at us and sing "la, la, la" and wait for us to start the song. Another part of that same song talks about a speck of dust and last night and this morning Brandon was trolling around the house singing "da, da, da, ooooooohhhhhh!" (da = dust) just like the song, in tune too. He really makes us laugh.

I think one of my favorite things he does right now is when he's really happy he sort of runs in place and says "Happy!" We obviously call it his happy dance. He's also still really big in to dancing to that farm music magnet set on the fridge. For those of you who've never seen it, there's a clip on my channel on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/colleenmesser) with him dancing to it when he was about 11 months old. I need to post a follow-up to that with what his dance has progressed in to. He basically squats really, really low and bounces in place now. Or he spins in circles and shakes his head. We never taught him any of this either. It's pure Brandon! And very funny.

I posted some recent photos of him last night to my web album. Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/colleen.messer . There will be more to come in the next few weeks.