New Things

Some new things Bennett is doing these days:

For a while now he has been clapping and saying, “Yay!........” after a song ends or when he does something good, but now he does that and ends it with, “Dah – doo.” (Thank you). Even before he’s done clapping, he’ll say, “Dah – doo.” He sounds like some performer on stage saying, “Thank you, I’ll be here all night.”

He’s into holding hands lately. When he gets up in the morning, I pull him out of his crib and put him on the floor, and before we walk out into the hallway, he grabs my hand. He does this quite often, and not just when he wakes up. Sometimes we just walk all around the house, him leading me with his little hand in mine.

He knows his little lunch box and looks for it before we leave for Montessori in the mornings. He likes to hold it and carry it to the car. I hand it to him, he turns to the back door and says, “Leh – doh!” (Let’s go!) If it hadn’t been for him on Friday, I would have forgotten his lunch. But as I was opening the back door to leave, he was looking up onto the counters and I realized he was looking for his lunch box (bag).

Today we went for a walk around the neighborhood and he saw some kind of marker in someone’s yard. It was white with red on top of it. I said, “What color is that, Bennett? Is it red?” He kind of mumbled something, then I said, “Rojo?” He said, “Oho!” Then tonight while at Mama and Daddy’s house I showed him a red ribbon and said, “Bennett, is this red?” He mumbled, then I said, “Rojo?” He said, “Oho!”

Last week was our first week of no crying when we dropped him off in the mornings. He was still a little hesitant to walk in, but he finally did with some coaxing, and he didn’t cry. He’ll walk up to the outside door and knock on it saying, “Nah, nah!” (Knock, Knock).

When we were at IHOP with Steve and Lynn yesterday morning, Lynn took one of Bennett’s crayons to color with. He immediately looked at her and said, “Mine!” That was the first I had heard that. I guess the good things he's learning in school come with the bad.

Speaking of the good, while at their house, Bennett played upstairs in the bonus room where Lynn has all kinds of great toys. They’re all very organized and tidy. Bennett found a basket full of happy meal toys on a chest. He took the basket and carefully carried it to the coffee table and began to take toys out. He and Lynn played with all the little toys for a while, then later he helped her put them all back in. He then took the basket and carried it over towards the chest. He kind of stopped and looked back and forth a little bit, and I realized he was trying to figure out where he had gotten it from. I said, “There, Bennett, on top of that table." It was a chest, but he knows the word table better, and it looked enough like a table. He then took the basket over and put it right on the chest where he had gotten it.

He's beginning to "count." He loves to count my toes. He's constantly bending down, touching my toes and saying, "doo, doo, dee, doh, dah!" Daddy swears he counted his in Spanish the other day, but I have yet to see that. :)

If he hears someone or a group of people laughing in a restaurant or the grocery store or something, he'll turn and laugh (very loudly) with them. It's such a cute, fake laugh.

I know there are so many more, but my brain is tired. My brain and my body. If I think of them, I'll add them to the next update list.