Eighties Hair Day

Some random observations about our little Flock of Seagulls boy.

When he wakes up in the morning he’s no longer getting out, grabbing a book, and going back to bed to read it. Mostly he just lays there, perhaps contemplating the day ahead (which is another episode of pre-school today).

He’s still a serious Curious George junky. Books, TV shows, the movie, or just any ol’ monkey he sees is his buddy and whatever George does or says must be closely followed. Combine this with his Mom’s language sessions and when Zane is five he’ll be speaking English, French, German, and Monkey.

Zane now counts to ten all by himself. During vacation we’d swim in the hotel pool and Zane would count to three before I’d “rocket” him. Over time I’d make the number larger and larger before blast-off, to the point where we’d get in the pool and he’d count all of the way to ten. He attempts to count higher, to twenty, and some of the “teens” come out sounding pretty funny. Hasn’t quite figured out counting objects much beyond three or four yet. You can ask him how many beans are on his plate or birds in a picture and as long as it is under five he usually does a good job, but when the numbers get higher he starts counting over. As in, “one, two, three…one, two, three” but then again he could be operating on a three’s based numeric system.

Raz and Zane are getting along for the most part. Raz tries to lick his face from time to time and Zane thinks that is very funny…usually. Somedays Zane wants one of Raz’s toys for himself and Raz will think it’s a game and it becomes a battle of the wills, Zane trying to take it away and Raz playing tug-o-war. They’ll even play catch sometimes. The other night Raz would bring a ball to Zane, let go of it, and Zane would toss it a couple of feet, laughing like crazy. The thing is that I can’t EVER get Raz to let go of things like that, it has to be taken from him. So maybe Zane is the alpha dog after all? That would explain a lot…

He’s still not gaining much weight, just shy of twenty five pounds. When either of us go to feed him he’ll lean forward and plead, “all done?” within the first couple of minutes. If you are good at distracting him … I make letters, words, or buildings with his food … then you’ll get another five or ten minutes of feeding before he’s “all done?” again. Repeat. Still, when he’s really hungry then there’s no problem stuffing a bunch of food into him. Speaking of numbers and food. One of my tricks is to lay out the remaining food in orderly piles and try to teach him addition and subtraction. We’ll count the food and then I try to ask or tell him how many are left after he takes one or I add one. Sometimes it works but sometimes he ends up eating all of the visual aids faster than I can finish a lesson. Which, considering it’s meal time, isn’t such a bad thing.