After months of glacial progress, Kenshin has suddenly started leaping forward in vocabulary.
Added recently:
"I would like..."
"...milk."
"...water."
"...noodles." (President's Choice White Cheddar Macaroni seems to be his favourite meal at the moment. That kid can pack the stuff away like there's no tomorrow.
"Don't want." (pretty much the answer to anything that isn't meat of some kind or PC white cheddar macaroni)
He's learned his colours and the first five numbers with a great deal of help from nightly sessions with Fisher-Price board books. His pronunciation of the word "pink" is darling.
He also likes to watch the small chickens in the child-friendly faming-based video game "Harvest Moon" and say "chicken in" or "chicken out" (of the henhouse). Only when he says it, it comes out "ts-icken in" "ts-icken owwt".
Daigoro began half-days of kindergarten, although as mentioned below, it wasn't really the same jarring transition it might have been, since he was already spending part of the day with the kindergarten class in his daycare class. He continues to be a gentle, loving and very considerate young boy, if a little spazzy at times. He surprised me the other day with a question about stars and falling stars, asking if the far away stars are suns, and if they are suns, how could you catch a falling star? I suppose he had heard or seen something which had involved catching a falling star.
Two weeks ago was my brother's wedding, which was an absolutely fabulous affair. Daigoro looked handsome beside his father the groomsman and his uncle the groom in the wedding party as the ring bearer. I'm not sure what is quite so adorable about children dressed up in formal wear or uniforms, but it sure is cute.
There's all sorts of other things about Kenshin's progress which I probably should document, but it's all happening so fast it's hard to keep track. I'll have to ask Marli for some input. More later.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Breakneck Acceleration into Speech Country
Yes, it's been a while. No, I have no good excuse, except that Kenshin hasn't been doing a lot of progressing. Until the last few weeks.
Somehow, for whatever reason, the spoken word switch seems to have suddenly flicked on for Kenshin. He's now actively asking use to "read book" (or even more impressively "read Sandra Boynton"), "I think I want to watch [Wall-E, Bolt, I Spy]" and dozens of other sentence fragments and individual words. He says "look, plane!" or "look, noodle!" appropriately when pointing at those respective objects.
This really must sound like "yeah, so what?" territory for many parents of 30 month old kids, but for Kenshin to be speaking at this level (~24 months) is a big leap forward in a very short amount of time. For the past six months previous to this latest development spurt, Kenshin had been speaking around a year-old level, well behind his age. Fortunately, as mentioned in previous posts, developmental assessment indicated that he wasn't too far behind in other aspects.
He's beginning to talk without prompting, excitedly describing things he wants or has seen. This, paired with his increasing comprehension of our commands to him ("come upstairs", "let's brush your teeth", "time to change diaper", etc.) has made it a little easier to deal with him.
Strangely, as I say this, he's actually not generally troublesome in the sense that he's actively causing mischief - it's just that due to his slow comprehension of verbal commands, he's generally indifferent or ignorant of what we want him to do, which makes him seem very uncontrollable except by pulling him about or physically sitting him where he needs to be (on the couch, in his chair, in bed, and so on). He's not drawing on walls because he wants attention - he just doesn't know any better.
Daigoro, by contrast, was speaking fairly clearly at this point in his development, albeit still in sentence fragments.
We took them to African Lion Safari this past Labour Day weekend. Surprisingly better than I was expecting, though I have to say I thought the kids would be more interested in animals roaming just outside the car windows than they ended up being. Kenshin in particular was more interested in his toys than the baby zebra frolicking about four feet away.
Daigoro and I had an interesting duel of wills a month or two back - I need to document that, but not tonight. Just wanted to get a record in while I had a spare moment.
[edit] OK, I have a spare moment.
I was instructing Daigoro to do something - what exactly I can't remember.
I was getting frustrated and I said, "Daigoro, it makes me very angry when you don't listen to me. Please do what I say."
To which Daigoro replied, "Why do I have to do what you want when you don't listen to what I want?"
I replied (in a somewhat taken aback manner), "Daigoro, children have to to what their parents want so that they stay safe and learn from what their parents know. Sometimes children don't know the right things to do yet."
That seemed to fly, but I have to say I wasn't expecting the teenage rebellion angle for at least another eight years.
Somehow, for whatever reason, the spoken word switch seems to have suddenly flicked on for Kenshin. He's now actively asking use to "read book" (or even more impressively "read Sandra Boynton"), "I think I want to watch [Wall-E, Bolt, I Spy]" and dozens of other sentence fragments and individual words. He says "look, plane!" or "look, noodle!" appropriately when pointing at those respective objects.
This really must sound like "yeah, so what?" territory for many parents of 30 month old kids, but for Kenshin to be speaking at this level (~24 months) is a big leap forward in a very short amount of time. For the past six months previous to this latest development spurt, Kenshin had been speaking around a year-old level, well behind his age. Fortunately, as mentioned in previous posts, developmental assessment indicated that he wasn't too far behind in other aspects.
He's beginning to talk without prompting, excitedly describing things he wants or has seen. This, paired with his increasing comprehension of our commands to him ("come upstairs", "let's brush your teeth", "time to change diaper", etc.) has made it a little easier to deal with him.
Strangely, as I say this, he's actually not generally troublesome in the sense that he's actively causing mischief - it's just that due to his slow comprehension of verbal commands, he's generally indifferent or ignorant of what we want him to do, which makes him seem very uncontrollable except by pulling him about or physically sitting him where he needs to be (on the couch, in his chair, in bed, and so on). He's not drawing on walls because he wants attention - he just doesn't know any better.
Daigoro, by contrast, was speaking fairly clearly at this point in his development, albeit still in sentence fragments.
We took them to African Lion Safari this past Labour Day weekend. Surprisingly better than I was expecting, though I have to say I thought the kids would be more interested in animals roaming just outside the car windows than they ended up being. Kenshin in particular was more interested in his toys than the baby zebra frolicking about four feet away.
Daigoro and I had an interesting duel of wills a month or two back - I need to document that, but not tonight. Just wanted to get a record in while I had a spare moment.
[edit] OK, I have a spare moment.
I was instructing Daigoro to do something - what exactly I can't remember.
I was getting frustrated and I said, "Daigoro, it makes me very angry when you don't listen to me. Please do what I say."
To which Daigoro replied, "Why do I have to do what you want when you don't listen to what I want?"
I replied (in a somewhat taken aback manner), "Daigoro, children have to to what their parents want so that they stay safe and learn from what their parents know. Sometimes children don't know the right things to do yet."
That seemed to fly, but I have to say I wasn't expecting the teenage rebellion angle for at least another eight years.
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