Memory & creativity

I have been amazed at how much Noah remembers. It is clear that key learning events get stamped into his mind. For example, this morning I was organizing his toy box, and pulled out a blue (plastic) Easter egg. Noah tried to get it open, and struggled a bit. Then, he finally got it open (I may have helped a bit), and he said, "the boy open it." This was a reference to several months ago (it had to have been over the summer) when we were playing outside, and he was holding the same plastic egg. One of the neighbor boys came over to talk with us, and he opened it for Noah. We haven't really played with it much since; it has just been sitting unnoticed in the toy box.

Similarly, yesterday we went to the toy store in Jenkintown (support your local businesses) and when we got to the door, Noah saw it was open, and said, "the lady come open it!" Many months ago, while we were at Jenkintown Java across the street, Noah had wanted to go from there to the toy store, but it was closed. We let him try to open the door, noticing it was locked. I told him, "It's locked. We have to wait for the lady to come and open the door." We waited there for at least 10 minutes before we convinced him to do something else instead. He still remembers these moments!

Speaking of language, he's getting great at constructing sentences. Yesterday morning, he said, "The basketball is outside in the garage over there." Pretty impressive for an almost 2! The clarity of his language in the morning is striking -- it is so evident that those little neurons are working hard while he's sleeping!

He is a typical 2 in that he wants to do almost everything himself. He wants to get in the carseat by himself. He wants to turn his the light off at night himself. He wants to close the shades. He wants to turn on the Christmas lights in the morning. He wants to take his shoes and socks off by himself-- to the point that if I take something off that he wanted to take off, I have to put it back on and let him do it! :) One of his common expressions is, "Noah do it!"

His singing is adorable. His favorites are, "The Wheels on the Bus," "Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer," "Twinkle, Twinkle," "ABCs," "Elmo's song," and one I made up about handwashing. I often make a little jingle when we are on our way somewhere, like, "we're going to the school today" to the tune of "Wheels on the Bus." Yesterday, I swear he made up his own song! It was also to the tune of "Wheels on the Bus," and went something like this, "Going to the ding, ding, ding; ding, ding, ding; ding, ding, ding; going to the ding, ding, ding; all day long." Translation: the "ding, ding, ding" is the railroad crossing by our house. This is a favorite activity of his as well -- watching the gate close with "ding, ding, ding..," the train passes, and then the gate closes. It is one of his all-time favorite things in the world.