Toddler development

I just had to share a few of the gorgeous things Little C has been saying just lately.  I love the way his mind is constantly busy trying to make links between things and working out what everything is called and who it belongs to.  Here are a few of the latest:


He has a pop-up Thomas the Tank Engine book, but was a little rough and a cow's head came off.  He was very worried about it: "Mooo, sore" for some time.  I took the book away and said that I would try to fix it, but over the next few hours, a sad face occasionally appeared, accompanied by "mooo, sore".  This morning I proudly showed him my repair, but as he looked at it, patting the repaired head, we were still treated to "mooo, sore" as he remembered the disaster of the previous day.


He knows that there's a baby in my tummy.  Looking at the enormous expanse of stomach this morning he pointed his little fingers at my tummy-button - "baby button"!  You can't argue with that...


Just a week ago we had dinner at the pub with our friends Gemma and Steve, and for the first time Little C was able to name somebody apart from Mummy, Daddy, Tara, Nana and Grandad.  We definitely had Stebe and Memma (who were tickled pink).  At the swimming pool yesterday morning we saw Steve, who told us that Gemma was still in bed, enjoying her day off.  This morning Little C was obviously still thinking about this.  Out of the blue a little voice looked up from his book to tell us, "Memma... bed"


Oh yes... he is gorgeous... and I'm so proud every time I look at him, and every time he pipes up with something new.  What a star!

I know that he's only 18 months old (tomorrow - eek!  Where has the time gone?), but I've also noticed a) his love affair with books already - long may it last, and b) he's showing an interest in letters and numbers.  I thought I'd harness this while it's there and have made some letter shapes out of cardboard.  

They are 8x6cm, and I've painted numbers one colour, and consonants and vowels different colours.  I've also, perhaps unconventionally, gone for capitals rather than lower case to begin with (I plan on adding lower case later), and when talking about the letters we use phonic sounds rather than letter names.  At the moment he is most interested in C (for Car), D (for Daddy) and M (for Mummy).  I don't quite know what we'll do with them yet, apart from playing matching games and just talking about them and playing with them.  I guess I'll just follow his lead.

I just got a cardboard box and opened it out, marked in lots of 8x6cm rectangles (Little C helped by drawing all over the cardboard at the same time, I made sure we had two pencils!).  Then I drew out a capital letter in each rectangle and cut them out.  I started by using scissors, but quickly changed to a craft knife (with plenty of layers of card and a plastic mat underneath so as not to scratch the kitchen work top).  Once all were cut out, I just painted them.  I have them in a shoe box, which I now need to decorate and entitle "The Letter Box".