Jacob has become fascinated with numbers. He can count, sometimes to six, sometimes to four ... then comes eight, nine TEN! (his favorite part) We'll work on those middle numbers later. The cool part is how excited he gets when he SEES numbers. He loves clocks (watches being defined as wrist-clocks), sounding like a very excited Germanic chicken when he sees one.
"a CHLOCK! a CHLOCK! a CHLOCK!"
He then shakes his finger back and forth like a metronome, "tick-tock, tick-tock!" I love seeing him free-associate from the metronome, to clocks, to the windshield wipers, to anything with numbers on it. We went to the market this morning, and everywhere he looked, there were "NUMBAS!" and we had to go and appreciate them all. The bakery people thought it was cute that he was bouncing up and down in front of the doughnut case, but it was only because all the pastries were 55 cents, so there were a dozen 5's in nice, big, bold writing. I feel like I'm living on Sesame Street!
He can also identify circles in all sorts of places and contexts, squares, triangles, red, yellow, and occasionally blue or green. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to see what he's seeing, because my grownup eyes have already pigeonholed this object. Then he stands there chirping about circles, and I realize that yes, this thing IS made of circles! I am amazed at how well he communicates. He showed me a picture of a kite, and said "Kite, fwy?" Well, yes, a kite does fly, you clever boy you! And his very favorite word, accompanied by the appropriate ASL sign for emphasis, is "AGAINAGAINAGAIN!!"
Mind you, YOU'LL never see him do any of this stuff, because any request for a public performance is met with a baleful glare and complete silence. But it's all true, and more, I swear.
Pamela
