Jack at 2 1/4 Years

I thought I'd give a quick update on Jack.  He's 1/4 of the way through his third year and growing up so fast.  The most noticeable change has been his vocabulary.  I know I said this in a recent post, but I can't say it enough - the boy just keeps adding to his vocabulary!!  He talks and talks and even says sentences of 5-6 words!  Sometimes we need to translate what he's saying for others, but we can understand 99% of what he's saying.

He's made some vast improvement on his ABCs in the month since I posted the last video.  He now sings the whole song and gets many of the letters right.  We're working on identifying the letters, but we're not there yet.

And here's a video of his counting.

His little personality is just a riot.  He loves for us to play with him (usually choo choos or balls) but will play by himself for some time as well.  He's recently discovered Little Einsteins and Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which are two cute cartoons on Disney Junior.  They are somewhat interactive and it's fun to hear him respond, for example, helping Jake count the coins they've earned or patting his legs to help the Einsteins' rocket take off.

Silly guy "wearing" Mommy's earrings

When we do play together, Jack tends to be rather particular.  If we're playing ball, he likes to specify where each person needs to stand and insists that you use two hands if you're holding the bat.  If we're playing choo choos, he always uses the green choo choo and usually "lets" us use the red choo choo, but of course that varies with his mood.  He always wants to take his shoes and jacket off when we get home and now insists that we take ours off as well.  I have recurring discussions with him about why I want to keep my slippers on while we're playing.

Jack plays pretty well with his friends.  Sometimes we have days/nights where he just isn't sharing well and we have to pull him aside and give him his options (i.e. share or we go home), but in generally he loves playing with his buddies.  Jack can't get enough of his BFF Addi.  They are so cute together, chasing each other, squealing and making each other laugh.  We have trouble sharing, but really only occasionally.  Here they are the other night - Addison was reading a book to Jack.  Love it.

A new-found love for Jack is "poppets" (pockets).  He LOVES his new winter coat because it has pockets for his hands and the first night he wore it he didn't want to take it off.  I finally got him to take it off by taking mine off as well, but then he insisted I leave it in his bed next to him.  Silly guy.

Jack loves his baby brother and is always giving him kisses.  When we're in the car he updates me on Charlie's status: "Babycharlie looking at me," "Babycharlie sleeping," etc.  If Charlie gets sad, I tell Jack to sing him a song to cheer him up - he usually chooses his ABCs.

My favorite time of day is first thing in the morning listening to him over his monitor.  He usually sings a song, either the ABCs or the Bumblebee Song ("I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee...."), he talks to his lovey, Blue (this morning he told Blue he was sorry), he calls to us "Moooommmmyyyyy, come get me,"  "Dadddddyyyyy, where are you?"  Man, it's cute.