Chatter, Chatter, Chatter

Brandon talks more than I do now (hard to believe but it's true!) and man does that little boy LOVE to sing. We bought him a little CD player for his play room and showed him how to turn it on and off. And we have a bunch of kids CDs for him to play. His vocabulary has doubled (which is scary) in about two weeks from just singing, singing, singing. At two he's already singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Row, Row, Row your Boat, most of the ABCs, and a few other songs that are originals to the artist that have words like Doodlebugs, Burrito, Dinosaurs, Violin, etc. (By the way all you moms out there - The Laurie Berkner Band is a GREAT kids group. Such fun songs. Brandon asks to listen to her every day.) He makes me laugh so much. We've made up dances to a lot of the songs and it's so much fun to watch him initiate them now. If he's playing by himself and I hear the music I sometimes peak and discover him doing the moves to the songs even when no one is watching. I LOVE IT!

I also discovered today how much Brandon wants to help me out. And by "help me out" I mean "not so much." I was nursing Alex on the sofa and we were watching Little Einsteins on TV together. I saw Brandon go over to the coffee table and pick up one of Alex's clean diapers and turn it over in his hand, then look over at me, smile, turn it over in his hand again, then look at me again and say "I help you Mommy!" And off he ran. I called to him several times to stop, to no avail, what 2 year old on a "help Mommy mission" is going to stop for Mommy? Then I heard the Diaper Champ pail turn over. Then Brandon ran back out to the family room and he looked at me, smiled, and said "All done Mommy. Diaper TRASH!" At which point I couldn't help but say "Thank you," send Joby a text message about what just happened, sigh because diapers are expensive enough without him wasting the clean ones, and laugh because my 2 year old is so funny and smart all at the same time.

And lastly - Brandon had his 2 year doctor's visit last week. He was 30 lbs and 33 inches tall. We brought a few books to entertain ourselves while we waited. Well when Dr. Chally came in he insisted on showing her his books. He then proceeded to "read" her every color in one of them (it's a book about colors). She was floored. So she took the book and randomly flipped pages (in case he had the order memorized and didn't really know his colors) and Brandon still got all his colors correct. She just looked at me and said "How did you do that? How did you get him to learn his colors so fast?" I was sort of surprised. I told her we colored a lot and what else is there to talk about when a child just scribbles with a crayon? And we have lots of legos and always talk about what colors they are with him when we play. Well - she told me that she looks for children to know about 3-4 colors at their 3 year old visits and that is was extremely unusual for a brand new 2 year old to know so many. So Brandon knows these colors - Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange (which sounds like Ocean when he says it), Purple (the most fun one to say for him), Brown, Black, White, Pink and Gold. (Last week he said "Aqua" at my mom's house for that color crayon but he hasn't repeated that yet). I find it hard to believe this was a big a deal as the pediatrician said. I feel like we just play with Brandon and haven't tried to push any sort of learning on him at all. We just have a lot of fun, act silly, sing, dance, etc more than anything else. So it was a really cool visit to the doctor that day, despite getting three shots at the end. :)