As usual, Jack is surpassing the milestones of other kids his age. This September, Jack will be 32 months old. (Soon, we can stop keeping track of months. Woo hoo!) In terms of milestones, he’s at about a 4 year level in his language, cognitive, social, and emotional milestones. He’s about average in his physical milestones. For example, he can throw a ball, but can’t catch it. He can’t draw letters, but he can draw lines and other shapes. He can alternate feet going up and down stairs (who knew that was a milestone?), but he can’t pedal a tricycle.
For the record, Jack is just about 30 pounds and is 35 inches tall.
Jack started Montessori preschool in July, just after July 4th, actually. We’d love to show you some pictures from Jack’s first fireworks display, but the camera is gone. It was either stolen from my car, or a gremlin has taken it from the house. I’m very distressed about this. In the end, Jack really did like his first fireworks. Once they were done, he said, “Wan’ it again. Jus’ one more time.”
Jack is learning a lot in school. He can put on his own shirt, shorts, and shoes. He can wash his hands, and indeed hates having dirty hands. His vocabulary continues to grow, with words like “reservoir”, “Neosporin”, “happenstance”, and “dame la mano”. Jack speaks in complete sentences, with pronouns, although they’re not always grammatically correct. He remains ahead of the curve, verbiage-wise. He asks for many of his books by name, and has practically memorized B is for Bulldozer. He has some pretty impressive words from that book too – he knows the names of many big trucks, including the excavator. Furthermore, Jack enjoys hearing “Once ‘pon a time”s, especially the one where “Pooh Bear gets stuck in Rabbit’s house”.
Jack has many friends at school, and he’s continuing to make more as the summer ends and “real” school begins.
Jack saw his second in-theater movie, Wall*e and LOVED it. He now has four Wall*e books, a Wall*e lunchbox (thanks Nana), and a transforming Wall*e and the Reject Bots (thanks Grandma and Grandpa).
Jack really started to love drawing back in May, and will now scribble on anything he can find. He has crayons, markers, pens, and pencils everywhere. He’s pretty good at drawing ovals and circles. He also loves drawing with his sidewalk chalk. Jack doesn’t write letters, but apparently his cousin, our nephew, Orion does. We got the chance to visit with Orion and his brother Cyrus at the end of July. Pictures forthcoming, we promise.
Jack has gotten to the stage where he tells everyone what to do – where to sit, what to draw, what to read, and so on. It’s very cute, in a small dictator kind of way. He’s also into pretend play. He loves his play food, and will share it with anyone. He has a great imagination too. He’s pretended that a basket with cloth napkins is a bucket and shovels. He’ll throw a birthday party for any of his stuffed animal friends.
Jack knows his colors, and recognizes most capital letters. He understands things that are the same and things that are different. He enjoys pointing out similarities between himself and Mommy and Daddy, for example. Jack can count to 20 (though he sometimes skips 16) and can recognize most numbers from 1 through 11.
Jack loves playing outside, and since we had our front and back yards re-sodded, he spends lots of time out there.
One task Jack hasn’t mastered is toilet training. He was very into it at the beginning of June, and we thought our gDiaper days were numbered, but, upon starting preschool, Jack became very anti-toilet. We need to be more consistent about it here at home, and encourage him to use the toilet more often.
We just got back from Pennsylvania, where we visited with Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Clyde, GG (Great-Grandma Trimble), Aunt Pam, Aunt Molly, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Lolo, and cousins Bryan, Joe, and Marie. We went to the zoo for the first time, and played at Pleasant Kingdom. Again, pictures will come soon.
