LETTERS! WORDS! NUMBERS! Oh my!

James is a whiz kid with letters and words and spelling and sounding out what he reads, and we owe it all to They Might Be Giants.  Seriously.  James goes to bed (and every-other-day nap) with the Here Come the ABC’s CD playing and has the entire thing memorized.  He’s constantly singing the songs.

But more than the songs, it has piqued his interest in all things LETTER related (we switch between letters and numbers so the same things goes for the Here Come the 123′s CD as well) and we find letters everywhere.  We’ve also reinforced his love of letters by signing them.  He can now successfully sign all 26 letters with the ASL fingerspelling signs and he’s beginning to be able to read our singing and tell us what word we spelled “Z-O-O… that’s zoo!”

His favorite word used to be “R-E-D spells red!” but now we’re venturing onto his name and whatever other words are in front of him.  He goes potty all by himself and his wipes are “F-L-U-S-H-A-B-L-E what’s that spell, Mommy?”  On Friday, David said he spelled S-A-U-C-E and David asked him what word that was, James answered “That’s sauce, Daddy.” without any help.  We think he is beginning to understand that the words have meanings.  One of our games if we’re waiting anywhere for any amount of time is to find some letters and read them forward and backwards, sometimes even signing them.

After breakfast, when we don’t have anywhere to go (which, you know, is everyday) we’ll pull out the pen and paper and practice drawing letters.  David has him 4/5ths of the way able to write his name.  I’m stunned.  I hadn’t even thought to work on writing his name.  H is still his favorite letter, even though that’s not in his name.

Oh, and about the potty… he’s capable of doing everything on his own, but he prefers having someone to put his underwear back on him, and most of the time he forgets to flush and wash his hands.  I was stunned to realize one day that I hadn’t had to ask him a single time if he needed to “go” — that he had taken himself to the potty on his own several times that day.  He prefers “Mommy Daddy’s potty” since there is a window in our bathroom and doesn’t need to turn on the light, even though we have the light switch extensions on his bathroom’s light switch.  If we can just get the flush and wash down, I’m perfectly okay with dressing him afterwards.  He is growing up so quickly.

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In other news, Lowell started singing tonight.  “Roooh, roooh, rooooh, . . . BOAT!”  It was the first time I heard him singing a song.  When you ask Lowell what color anything is, he answers, “Blue!”  His vocabulary is slowing increasing though he doesn’t talk very much (who needs to with a chatty big brother around?) … we have heard some 2-word phrases though, so we’re not worried about his development.  His favorite word is “Mine!”  I wonder why… he is just too cute!