Before now the girls have generally eclipsed what he was learning and how capable he is.
Nicholas can count to 7, recognize some letters and numbers, knows a bunch of colors, can color almost in the lines, and can follow a maze (and cheated only at the very end). He can dress and undress himself, knows all the chess pieces, can bounce/roll/throw/catch, can do a rung on the monkey bars by himself, rides a 16" bike with training wheels, uses a napkin, says Excuse Me, Please and Thank You without prompting, and can buckle himself into his carseat. Yeah yeah, I know there are some kids light years ahead of him, but with no direction for the past 3 years but what he picks up from around the house, I don't think it's too shabby.
So today we watched Bear in the Big Blue House and their Numbers episode. We also colored in his Spiderman coloring book and played with magnet letters to write out his name, his sisters, baby, mommy, cat, dog and horse. He asked me to tell him each letter, repeated it, and found other letters in the pile that matched. We need a few more sets of letters though. There is a set from when I was a kid and obviously missing some letters, and though I've bought a new set to add to it since then, there simply aren't enough to write out all our names at the same time. And many of them don't have magnets on the back so they can't be fridge art. Must fix that soon since he's interested. And of course wherever we are, Jonathon is too so he'll reap some benefits from this as well.
I'm definitely thinking this was the right choice for us. The thought kept rolling around our heads to put Nicholas into preschool (AmeriKids at Seafront, $120/mo, 9-1:30, M-F) but today I thoroughly enjoyed having just the boys, doing fun little kid stuff and talking with Nicholas. Yes, talking, as he's a chatterbox and full of ideas. I can also spend quite a bit of time each day correcting his grammar and pronunciation. Now we don't have nearly the number of interruptions as before and I can really focus on him. It's a huge deal that he can now say "one" instead of "uhf" and "pott-y" instead of "puh-ee." I'm still working on correcting words like "maf" for "fast", and fixing his grammar. He has an extremely difficult time integrating the "k" sound into any word. With effort he can make the sound alone (but often will revert to a "t" sound instead) but putting it into a word hasn't occured but for once instance of managing "beh-kah" instead of "beh-ah". He seems to flip consonents around a lot. And rather than saying "I" he'll use "Me yes." He chatters non-stop but it's like listening to code. There is a drawback to this, as Jonathon is picking up a bunch of his poor speech. I'd like to fix it all at the same time and I have high hopes as Nicholas is already correcting himself in some situations.
I'll have to record some of the things he says. Especially at dinner time, it's rare when I don't break out laughing because of a response he gives. Many of his quips are 3 year old humor (having to do with bodily functions usually), but some of them are priceless.
He is still the charmer, even in his 24-hour Spiderman PJs (complete with hat and pull down mask) that we found at the nearby ShoeMart for $6. We went in and looked through all the Spiderman Ts, but not one of them would do. He didn't want a t-shirt with Spiderman on it, he wanted to BE Spiderman. And luckily enough they had them. I'm wondering if I shouldn't get a second set.
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