Monkey House

My favourite thing to watch lately is the growth of the monkey’s imagination. He’s been doing the usual “vroom vroom” thing with toy cars or “choo choo” thing with toy trains, but a fully-realized session in imaginationland is pretty new.

We were playing one of our favourite games, “Tackle” (Cacko!), which involves running back and forth between his room and the master bedroom, with me catching him, “tackling” him (really, just catching him and gently rolling around with him, zerberting him, and tickling him). He can go back and forth for what seems like hours. “Mo? Mo cacko? Pease?” A few days ago, though, he plunked down on a body pillow that happened to be on the floor, the way one might sit on a log near a campfire.

“Appo” (Apple), he said.

“Going to eat an apple, are we?” I asked. Head nod.
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Language skills are really taking off right now. He’s a pretty good blabber, and likes to make up words and sentences. He can identify all kinds of things by name, and ask for them when appropriate. “Cheese? Please?”

It’s fun engaging him in conversation to see how far it can go. Today brought a pretty short but neat little sample. As soon as I arrived home, he wanted to take me into the kitchen. Apparently snacking was on his mind.
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Whew… that’s a lot to talk about in one post. I’ll try to keep it as highlights.

Christmas

…was pretty neat this year. Monkey had no Christmas “anticipation”… no real thoughts on what Santa was, why he was getting gifts, what the family gatherings were, or anything like that. But he enjoyed Christmas Eve with the family, had fun opening presents both then and throughout Christmas day with the families. He offered to help many people open theirs, too, since opening was really the fun part. We had asked for “no big things” this year, so he was spoiled only in terms of mainly useful things like clothes, books, and a trike. Of course, there’s no avoiding a certain amount of toys, and he got this AWESOME wooden … er… activity centre? that he really enjoys. Magnetic drawing boards were also popular.

All the Christmassyness threw off his schedule, though, and we thought he’d be back to normal after a few. It now seems that this may just be coincidence and his schedule might need amending. 12:30 is seeming too early for a nap, although having a later bedtime isn’t doing anyone any favours, either. Still trying to sort this one out. More in a later post.
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