Zach's latest

It's time for another Zach update... bear with me.

One of my favorites recently was an experience we had at a local bookstore, which conveniently had a train table set up in the children's section. So I was free to browse for a birthday gift while Zach played with Thomas the train. There was another little boy there as well, who was probably close to three years old. Suddenly I heard "what's your name?" I peeked around the corner to watch, because we've been trying to teach Zach to ask people's names, rather than refer to them as "that girl" or "red guy" (meaning a guy in a red shirt). Apparently the little boy had said hi to Zach first, and after saying hi, Zach asked him his name! Their conversation then went like this... A: My name is Alex.
Z: Alex... Alex...(long pause). My name is Zachary.
A: Zachary!! I like that name.

That was the extent of it, but I was standing in the stacks just laughing. I was so proud of him for remembering to ask the boy's name!! It was odd to watch him having his own conversation, and so very cute.

Zach loves to sing, and has a really good memory for remembering songs. While we were in Florida, Scott mused that Zach probably knew 50 songs. That sounded absolutely ridiculous to me, so we started keeping a list. We got up to about 43 before we lost interest, and I'm still amazed that he knows that many! Not every word, of course, but we counted it if he could get the general melody and most of the words right. I think the alphabet song and the wheels on the bus remain his favorites, but lately John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (sp?) is popular too.

Since Zach learned the alphabet, it's been interesting to watch how his understanding of letters has evolved in realizing that the letters in his books make up words. He is constantly asking us how to spell things, and what a specific word is. And now Scott has been teaching him phonics. Zach does really well with most consonants; if you ask him what "dog" starts with, for example, he'll say "duh, duh, duh - D! D starts with dog!" We laugh that he can often get the letter right, but still mixes up the sentence. And we've remembered how difficult our language is; it's impossible to explain why some things start with a C and others with a K, and forget about the vowels!!

The finger-painting picture is yet another examples of Zach's smile... at least what you get when you ask him to smile for the camera. Sigh. I really miss the days when he would look right at the camera and give a big toothy grin.

And our latest news - Zach peed on the potty today! Whoo hoo! I think it was mostly lucky timing, but I cheered like a mad woman anyway. I'm not so sure he's ready, although I think it helped him a lot to see what peeing on the potty actually meant... he said "there's water coming out of there!"