learning

There are many reasons why I keep this blog - to share pictures and videos with friends and family, to have a creative writing outlet, to gain wisdom and insight from other people, and to share Jude's cuteness with the world. One of my primary reasons for starting and continuing this blog however, is because I hate scrap booking. Blogging seems like a much more efficient way to document what's going on with our family, to put up photos, to track milestones, and to keep videos. Plus, it's way cheaper. Scrap booking can get expensive, yo!

So I fully understand if this post is of no interest to you, because quite honestly - this isn't one of those posts that I write for anyone else but ourselves. I just wanted to document some of the things Jude's been learning in the past couple of weeks. Nonetheless, I'm thrilled to be able to share some of the things Jude's learning with you, and hope you find it at least vaguely interesting.

Jude has the sign, "all done" down pat! We've only used it in reference to eating and sometimes diaper changes, so it blew me away when he signed "all done," during our outside playtime the other day. "That's cute," I said to Shawn, "He's waving his hands around!" Shawn realized that Jude was actually saying that he was all done playing outside and asked, "You ready to go inside, Jude?" With a nod of his head, Jude answered "Dessss," and toddled himself to our door to go inside. Sometimes I think I severely underestimate what he's capable of understanding.

Without intending to, it appears that we've taught Jude how to pray. Shawn and I pray before eating dinner, and have always held hands across the table when we do so. Once Jude was in his highchair, we'd each hold one hand out to him to hold. At first, he looked at us like we were the strangest people he'd ever met. Then he'd hold our fingers for a second or two and babble through most of our prayer. He now mostly holds on for the entire prayer, though sometimes he has a hard time waiting to dig in. :) After we started eating last night, I was playing around with Jude and held my hand up to his tray. He grabbed my first two fingers and just held on for awhile. Imitating him, Shawn grabbed my other two fingers and said something about Jude and Daddy holding Mommy's hand.

Jude pushed Shawn's hands from mine and with his other hand held onto Shawn's now free hand. He squeezed his eyes super tight and bowed his head. Our little guy was expecting to pray! Of course we obliged, thanking God for our sweet son and how He's molding and growing him.

Jude has also learned that cows go, "Mooo." I had shown him pictures of cows and made the noise, and he would sometimes imitate me. While we were playing yesterday, he picked up a little stuffed Chick Fil A cow from Grammy. He held it up in air, looked at the cow, looked at me, formed his lips into a perfect "O" shape, and let out a deep, "Ooooooooooh." He'll figure out how to attach the "M" at some point.

Jude can also now clean out his own ears with a Q tip (supervised, of course). We typically clean his ears out after bath time, and he's recently begun grabbing the baby Q tip and doing it himself. He has remarkable aim and actually does it correctly. Now if we could just figure out how to teach him to change his diaper....

I could also share how he's learned to throw himself onto the floor in a fit of rage, how he's found the one lower cabinet in our kitchen that isn't childproofed and hides random books, toys, lids, and other "treasures" in there, or how he's learned to throw his pacifier on the car floor and then scream for twenty minutes because he doesn't have his pacifier. I could share that stuff. But for now, we're just going to pretend that he's angelic, sweet, perfect, and cute all the time. Because really, he's pretty dang close.