Paul's Language Development

Lately Paul has taken to yelling as we go under bridges or overpasses or through tunnels. He did it on the way to the zoo with his Spanish-speaking friends who, of course, referred to the bridge by its Spanish name "puente."
So, we're driving to the Bible study Sunday night, and as we passed under a bridge, Paul yelled. Then he said, "That was a fun-tey."
"Yeah. It was a puente, Paul." I said, trying to implement what all the child experts say is the best way to correct an error in juvenile nomenclature.
Paul responded with an enthusiastic, "Good job, Mommy!"

Bob the Builder

When we locate our camera (I think I know where it is), we'll put some pictures up, but here's a story in the meantime.

So Paul has this puzzle with wooden tools for puzzle pieces. The other day he took the hammer and started banging our wooden wall. "Paul," inquires his father, "what are you doing?"

Paul's response: "Buildin' a sand castle."

Paul's Words

Well, I hear people say that they do this when their kid is learning to talk, so I'll try. But it's really hard because he'll probably pop out with a new one here this afternoon. His passive vocabulary is quite large, and his lingual capabilities are developing so rapidly, that I think that any compilation of active vocabulary words is incomplete at best.

Here's what we've got so far that he says on his own:
Bible
ball, ball, and more balls
bi-per (diaper)
uh-oh
na-nai (night-night)
bye-bye (occasionally, "Bye-bye, buhbuh" for "Bye-bye, bullies" in one of his books)
nanana (which is obviously "banana")
Puppy
Daddy
bath
bear
book

Here's what we've gotten him to say (I think):
Mm-mama (for those of you who haven't already heard, this is a very clear "Grandmama")
popcorn
cowboy
Laura (Sorry, Toots. I tried.)

I'll add more as I think of them.
(as of 10/24/08) Tooh (There. How's that?)

Paul also has taken up the kazoo. If I play "Zacheus," he starts clapping on the third note. Then he'll grab the instrument and really make a very fine pitch variation, in my opinion.

He loves his cowboy boots. A lot.
He knows where stuff is. If I say, "Let's play with your blocks," he finds them.
He enjoys having his teeth brushed.
He's getting some molars.
Corn is his favorite vegetable.
He still loves whipped cream.
And, this is bad, isn't it. He's a big fan of sweet tea. I don't give it to him much, though.

Monkey Mess

No pictures for this one. Paul has taken a liking to the vent covers in our house. I at first thought it was cute, something for him to do, and so on. When Daddy found out that Paul had become adept at removing vent covers, he urged me to put a stop to it citing the possibility that Paul could drop something down one of them. Agreeing with his logic, I tried to be alert to Paul's propensity to imitate Grandpa Jeffcott's heating and air expertise and remind him of the "no-no-hood" of vent covers. Well, no one is perfect. I knew he was over there. I had told him no already and he had stopped messing with it. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him prying the vent cover in the study up off the floor with his little fingers. I resolved to issue another reminder as soon as I clicked a couple more buttons to complete my online purchase order, when it became obvious that I was too late. The cover itself had slipped down the dusty portal and knocked the duct off. So for the rest of the afternoon, the spiders in the crawl space enjoyed free climate control. Daddy came home that evening and crawled under the house with a roll of duct tape to fix the problem. We even let Paul stay up late thinking he would really get a kick out of talking to Daddy through a hole in the floor. Well. He actually freaked out. But, when you think about it, that would be pretty scary. However, in addition to the vent cover, we (Jon, that is) also discovered that Paul had managed to toss a CD and his Paci down the hole. I'm not sure if he was hoping his wish would come true or what.

Playing Outside

We'd like to start off with a special Thank You to Mrs. Schlichting for the content of these pictures. The haircut and toy are compliments of her. After the haircut, Paul had so much fun playing in the yard with Nathaniel and Julianna that Mrs. Schlichting insisted that we take home the truck for Paul to borrow.

Last night Paul was able to putter around the yard for about 4 minutes before we had to get in the car to go to visitation. That made getting in the car a devastating experience indeed. But, it turned out that the nursery has a similar toy (for girls, but we didn't tell Paul). My friend Ashlyn kept the nursery with Paul, Jakey (a 2-year-old), and her son J.J. Now, J.J. is right around Paul's age. So, back to the toy. Paul apparently found it and began pushing it around the nursery. Then, according to Ashlyn, J.J. wanted to get in on the action as well. So he sat on the toy, and Paul gave him a ride around the nursery. We all wish there were a video of that. But it's a cute story anyway.

Now for today. Paul donned what Aunt Laura would refer to as a "See Jack run." outfit (presumably because of the quasi-Opie Taylor / All-American-kid-you'd-find-in-stories look it conveys), and we headed out.


Quick Clippety stop on the way out


Pushing Truck


He was fascinated by the "flowers."


Assessing the damage after a crash


Getting stuck


Getting unstuck

Quiet is a Bad Sign

You know where this is going. So I had already taken the box of wipes away from Paul once today. He had a really hard time getting the lid open, but I thought I should be careful anyway. Turns out I was right. I put the box of wipes away in his room, but when I changed him, he knocked it off our little changing station, and I paid no attention. I went to take care of the old diaper and a couple other things. It did cross my mind that he must have found something new to hold his attention since he wasn't following me into the laundry room, his favorite place of all. . . besides the refrigerator, that is. Anyway, as I smiled to myself about how it's kind of nice that Paul is able to entertain himself more and more, I walked back to his room to see just which of his toys had captured his interest at this particular moment. Toys, schmoys.

Getting the camera probably wasn't the best way to teach him that his behavior was unacceptable, but can you blame me?

National Train Day

May 10 was National Train Day. You didn't know that, did you? Not many people did. I'm pretty sure it was the first ever National Train Day in history, but when you're Amtrak, I guess you get to declare national holidays whenever you want. Being Saturday, lots of folks were off work for the occasion. The banks were closed (in the afternoon), and most of downtown Raleigh was completely shut down. . . unless it's always like that.

Anyway, we had a good time riding a train from Charlotte to Raleigh and back on NTD. We arrived in Charlotte Friday evening to discover that Grandmother had provided Paul with, in addition to train tickets, a train outfit, train hat, train Jibbetts (hadn't heard of them, but apparently they're all the rage for decorating Crocs), a train toy, and train animal cookies. Then she tried to convince us that Granddad was the most excited of anyone to take this train ride. I'll let you decide. Granddad was the one who bought the toy whistle in the train station.

When we arrived in Raleigh, not having a car seat, we set off on a scenic walk to Pullen Park for a family picnic with Grandmother and Big Mac, two of Jon's dad's brothers, an aunt, several cousins and two other baby (2 years, 6 months) cousins once removed. We had fun there eating chicken and riding the little train ride. (Interesting side note: we have very similar train ride pictures of Jon, me, Laura, and Kendra taken the day after Jon and I were engaged.)

Here are the pictures.

Random picture of Paul the morning before we left for Charlotte

Us on the train


Paul and the Gparents on the train


The Jibbetts®


The whistle, sticker, and hat


The Andy Griffith statue


Train ride with Grandmother


Happy belated National Train Day.

Life with Paul

Paul is really enjoying being home with Mommy all the time. At least, I'm sure he must be; Mommy is sure loving it. Crawling is in sight. Paul will not remain on the floor long without popping up on his hands and knees. Then he'll rock back and forth like, "There's got to be more to it than this." If he sees something he wants, he gets to it somehow though. For example, if a toy (especially his truck) is in front of him but out of reach, he'll pop up, stare at it, rock, lunge forward, land on his tummy, and wave his arms and legs around as if to say, "Hmm. Seems like this should work." He'll catch on.

Now for the pictures.



Paul before our walk to the duck pond. Turns out it was like 65 degrees, so he was a tad overdressed. But don't you love the hat?










My friend from college, Carolyn Jones, was in town for Christmas. We had the same Thursday class schedule our first semester, we both changed our majors from church music to speech, we traveled on drama teams 2 consecutive semesters, we were engaged the same summer, she got married the month after I did, and her due date for Samantha was 4 days after Paul's. Here's Paul trying to instruct Samantha that pictures are serious matters, not to joke around about.



Here's Paul in his sweats with the remote.















Paul learning the fine art of rough-housing on the floor with Daddy.










Paul's early crawling attempts.

Rainforest Jumperoo

All right. I know you've seen cute video of Paul in the past, but this, you will agree, is the best one yet. Okay, Jon and I decided to give Paul his Christmas present early so he can get an extra month's worth of enjoyment out of it. We picked it up at Target last evening and put it together for him. It was right before bedtime when he finally got to ride in it, but he still had some quality time bouncing. See, the one in the church nursery doesn't have batteries (for obvious reasons), but this one lights up and plays music if it moves. So, Paul figures out right away that when he bounces, the toy lights up, a song plays, and the elephant makes a sound. This was fascinating. He would pause and stare at the thing until it stopped blinking, beeping, and elephanting (or however elephants go). Then when it was quiet, he'd wave his arms and move around so the toy would rock and the show would start again. We happened to catch one of these cycles with the camera. I'm thinking of submitting it to Fisher Price in case they want it for a commercial.

Thumb story

Paul has found his thumb. It's super cute. You'll want the sound for this video. I apologize for the footage of the wall. I don't remember doing that.

Anyway. We thought Paul was progressing pretty well with consistently finding his thumb when he wanted it, but we had no idea just how well until this morning after church. . .

We were talking with some folks who were noting things about Paul like how much hair he has and how he's so much bigger than many 3-month-old babies, and how he looks so grown up, etc., etc. Well, he began to put his right thumb in his mouth. Jon reached over and pulled his hand away playfully. Paul grinned at him and popped his thumb right back in his mouth. Jon pulled it away and held his hand. Paul, grinned even bigger and proceeded to stick his other thumb in his mouth--demonstrating not only his great manual dexterity, but also his control over the situation.