Wow I kept a lot of notes from this month!

Fall treasures:

Decorating for Halloween:

Setting up our fall table at home:

ZBL knows some of his shapes now: circle, square, star, triangle and he can count with fingers proficiently (3 is hard): 1, 2, 5, 6, 7.

He has started to include please on his own more frequently, without my having to remind him. :)

Time with cousins:

ZBL loves his Mickey Mouse shirts.  Thankfully we have 3 as he wears them every day.  Sometimes he wears the orange Halloween Mickey shirt 2 or 3 times in 1 week.  He has many opinions about what to wear and is practically impossible to dissuade.  

Friday routine:

After swimming lessons at 10:15 am, we go to California Ave. and get a Subway sandwich and watch the construction that is going on. Z loves the different diggers and it’s fun to watch him watch them.

and one Friday, ZBL even wore his worker outfit to the construction site:

Kickers soccer class:

3rd Sunday feeding the animals at SPL’s school:

Language development (English): 

Replaces consonant blends w/ single letters:

Small = fall

Spider-Man = fireman

Class = Tass

And he can’t say K or G (says doh for go) replaces hard K sound with T

But he can say stairs

Doesn’t have K sound or GL (glue is said “blue” – Chun Hua figured it out b4 I did :)

Z loves music & sings In Summer from Frozen  (but hasn’t seen the movie yet :). We even got him an Olaf costume for Halloween :).  Z also now hums his lullaby with me before I put him down for nap/bed .  He can pick out lyrics from popular songs (played on the Sonos speakers ) as well as songs from school. He can also sing the Patience Song, parts of the Pixar short Boundin’, and Little Bunny Foo Foo.

I love our conversations in car: we talk about all the trucks, diggers, & buses going by.

And he now knows his birthday :)!  "June 12th!“ he announces with pride.  Learned it on 10/21.  I was just telling him about his birthday and for some reason it just stuck.  And I asked him again the next day and then a few days later and he still had it.  Funny kid brain really hones in on facts :).

Things that make him laugh:

frunk - what the front trunk (under the hood) is called in John’s Tesla.

Seattle (thanks Uncle Gerry) – we Facetimed with my Uncle Gerry who was visiting Dad & Mom in Texas and he talked about visiting Billy in Seattle and for sone reason that made Z laugh out loud.

contest (now that I’m writing this in July 2015, I can’t remember why this is funny :)

cherry picker – this was from the Digger Dozer book.  SPL said "cherry picker? What cherry picker?” And Z just thought that was hilarious.  Now it’s their inside joke (and I got to teach SPL what an inside joke was :)

brunch -  (now that I’m writing this in July 2015, I can’t remember why this is funny :)

Z loves the mailman and we see him a lot when we are riding to preschool in the afternoons.  The mailman is super friendly.

Books he loves this month: Personal Penguin by Sandra Boynton & Cars and Trucks and Things that go by Richard Scarry (video of him on small camera).  He loves Pengba, his stuffed penguin, so we found this new Boynton book at the local bookstore.  It repeats “I want to be your personal penguin.  Imagine me your personal penguin!”  Z loves finishing the sentences.

And Goldbug! He has found all the Goldbugs and loves finding them over & over.  He also loves Dingo dog & officer Flossy.

Funny story:  we went to the library on 11/7 and Z picked out a Geronimo Stilton book for SPL :)

Halloween – Z loved being Olaf.  The head part even fit (was too big actually).  He was the only Olaf at SPL’s school parade & at his preschool parade too (there were a lot of Elsa’s at S’s school).

English language: his sentences are increasing in complexity: “Listen for Jose. Listen for Steve and Aurelio (they are our recycle & trash guys). Different man takes compost diapers.”

10/27:  oh no! Balloon!  Balloon fly away (over the gate)

10/30: O. O!  I found it!  There’s an O (on the milk carton).

“Throw it in the trash?”

“Sam is in the bathroom.”

“Other ones go in trash — these, wash them (talking about the new pouch containers that I got that are reusable).”

“This one already rolled up (cuffs on pants).”

“fash it” — smash it.

“Fee Fee” = smoothie

“wipe it other one nose” — other nostril (this one made me smile :)

“1, 2, 8, 7.”

“Mizawaski"— mike wozowski (he has a baseball cap with mike wozowski’s eye on it and he wears it most days to preschool :).

“still eating dinner”

"Drink some milk for ficy.” (spicy)

OH in the back seat when we were driving — “Take bath, I’m stinky.”

And he knows all the names of Bing classmates (not sure if he can match them 100% with humans) and this is without having a placemat to look at :).

new word: measuring (making banana bread).  Z enjoys helping me bake and it’s fun to give him his own ingredients to measure while he’s sitting in his high chair.

pretending has increased dramatically — even pretends like his food is a boy walking (based on the shape he eats out of it) or a moon in the sky.

Chinese language – his spoken Mandarin is really exploding this month too.  He’s still about 4-6 months behind his English and now he is saying 1-3 words at a time:

10/28 – shang jao mien bao — banana bread

Hi o ji dan ho — egg carton

Bu cher huang suh — don’t eat yellow part of egg (Z said the chinese sentence on 10/22)

yi ga – one

10/14 — lian ga – 2 (counting)

pee chio — ball

gung nuare — park

10/19 — pointing at rabbit in Curious George book and said “toodze” (chinese for rabbit)

cā dian shuai dáo — I almost fell down

We’ve been walking around the neighborhood a lot and he walks even more with Chun Hua and now he recognizes the hand on walk signal means stop (11/3).  He also knows what do you do at the corner?  Z answers “stop and hold hands”.  Hooray!

Funny Z-isms:

He creates a “pillow pile” of stuffed animals to lie on while I change his diaper.

He now is very fond of wiping off kisses when he gets them and then he giggles.  

He loves “making purple milk” by adding blackberries to his cereal.

Quirkiness:

drinking out of 2 bottles with straws at same time

10/20 — Zack knocks at door and opens and says “mom, question?”  :)

“Why you do that man?” Is something he came up with (need to ask S if he remembers the genesis of this).

Loves soccer and Ohlone friends of Sam: Yash and Nico.  And he recognizes a lot of people now: friends of S’s and even parents of friends :).

Knows S is for SPL & Z is for ZBL  and O (not sure why he knows O but :)

Using scissors pretty effectively.  Holds them well.  We started him with scissors earlier which I think is a good thing (though he uses them to cut up the recycle material in the living room which is a good (& sometimes bad - as it takes over everything) thing.

Wow – so much growth and development!  I love the 2s!