Rainy days and Mondays

Oh my, a week with no posts! I'd like to say this situation occurred because we were just too busy living fabulously interesting lives to blog...but that would be a lie. Indeed, there are weeks like this one in which I can't tell one day from the next because they are all wrapped up in a cloth of sameness.

Which is not to say things didn't happen this week, because of course they did, but these things weren't all that noteworthy. But let's just pretend they were, shall we, and spend some time talking about J's latest developments.



J has become a climbing fiend! Here he is (blurrily) climbing on the kitchen he has turned into a jungle gym. He has also mastered climbing up onto all our couches and is working his way up our shelves. He powers up and down stairs now at breakneck speeds. Today at church, his little friend who is two months older came down some stairs they had climbed backwards in an army crawl, and J just stood at the top and stared at him, wondering what the heck he was doing, then calmly descended the stairs facing front, using the handrail. Of course! In fact, J is quite advanced in terms of physical development. Sadly, however, his verbal development still lags behind. Besides the perpetual "daddy" and the occasional "nana" for banana, we've had no other distinguishable words. Lots of chatter, lots of animated "discussions," but nothing else we can definitively declare words. He's a social, communicative little boy who feels no compulsion whatsoever to talk when grunting and babbling and pointing seem to be doing the trick just fine!

He has, however, increased his vocabulary. All on his own, with zero coaching from us, he's begun to identify body parts when asked, shocking me, his totally unhelpful mother. He gets hung up on his nose if you ask about that one too early, so you have to be strategic to get any kind of results. And he is showing an amazing aptitude for distinguishing between various types of construction vehicles, his favorite being the crane they are using to repair a bridge near our house. One of these when he's ready, he will launch into a discussion of the relative merits of painting cranes orange versus red, but for now he's happy just to squeal and point.