Continued Progress

I mentioned in my previous post that Charlie has mastered counting from 1 to 10. What I didn’t realize is that, thanks to sweet Pamela, he can also count to 10 in Spanish! He’s not quite as confident as counting in English, but if I get him started, he gets most of the numbers right. It’s pretty impressive – especially his pronunciation. He says diez complete with the Castillian lisp for the z – too cute.

He’s also turning into quite the little dancer. I think most kids start moving to music really early, but Charlie was never much of a dancing baby. I think part of it might have been that he wasn’t a very confident walker for so long, so maybe dancing was just beyond his comfort level. But now he loves to bounce and sway and twirl. And he claps right on the beat – I think he has a good sense of rhythm. My cousin Jen gave him a Baby Einstein classical music CD when he was born, and we listened to it a lot with him when he was an infant, but we hadn’t pulled out out in a while. We recently swapped out his normal Raffi nighttime CD for the Baby Einstein one, and he loves it!  The first few songs have a fast tempo, and he loves to dance and spin around.

I took Charlie to his Tumbles gym class yesterday. The kids range in ages from a year to 4 or older. Last winter when we did it, Charlie was in a class with mostly kids his age, and it was pretty evident that his physical skills weren’t as developed as the other kids, but this year he’s really holding his own. Yesterday one of the activities involved planks placed between stacks of mats at different heights, so the kids had to climb up a couple of stairs and walk down one plank, up another, and then down the third. Charlie tried it once with me holding his hands, but was pretty scared and didn’t want to try it again. But one of the teachers came and said, Charlie, let’s try it – and I think because it wasn’t me pushing him, he didn’t put up any fuss – he just did it. She said he was shaking with fear, but he didn’t cry and he walked all three planks. It’s great for him to be tested, because he gets more confident every time we go there.

He’s started repeating everything. This morning, I brought him down to the playroom and he pointed to his toys and said, “MESS”. Guess who he picked that up from??  He says, “Mama cossee” when I make coffee in the morning, and requests pasta and cookies with regularity. He’s still full of mischief, but he gets a funny look on his face when he’s about to do something he knows he shouldn’t, so if we’re paying attention we can usually head him off. He’s so happy right now. Such fun!