Well, that didn't take any time at all! Christmas morning, Jimmy surprised us with an unprompted, "7,8,9,10." At my dad's house that day, when asked to count, he did 1-10 for Grannie, with no assistance. Now, we're having some trouble with 6, but it's because he thinks he's finished after 5. Still, pretty amazing!

Jimmy Counts to 5

Just in case Jimmy (a.k.a. the performing monkey) will not perform for everyone at Christmas, I finally caught him counting to 5 on video! NO, the numbers aren't pronounced precisely correctly, but these sounds are listed as sounds kids should make by age 4 - so we're OK! He was just repeating the 5 numbers, but it's starting to be actual counting. He recognizes when there's 2 of something. He told Daddy "Two airplanes" the other day and he showed me balloons in a book and when I asked how many there were, he pointed at each and then said "Two," so the concepts are getting there too. It's not just a performed tricked! Can't wait to see everyone at Christmas. Sorry, no Christmas cards again this year. Maybe I'll get the timing down for next year!

Jimmy helps Daddy

Jimmy doesn't just help Mommy; he helps Daddy, too. Here he is helping Daddy change our front door knob and deadbolt on Dec. 3rd. Look at how filthy his hands are! He was working hard!

Cool New Trick

How cool is my kid??? Don't you wish you had one just like him? He just unloaded an entire load of laundry from the dryer and into the basket. Granted, it was a small load, but the only help I gave him was when I pushed the last few items from the back of the dryer to the front. He used to love picking up a sock if you dropped it, or loading things from the washer to the dryer, (that slowed things down a bit - pull it out of the washer, hand it to him, tell him to put it in the dryer, wait for him to do it, next piece . . . ), but now he's actually doing some work! We may keep him after all! Now, if I could get him to quit undecorating the tree as quickly as I decorate it, life would be a dream!

Here are some pictures of the "Help" I'm receiving with the Christmas tree.

Stairs

Well, I've gotten some complaints that I haven't updated the blog lately. It's not that there's not much to report, just nothing to "show." I have lots of friends that just type and type about what's going on - maybe I'm just too lazy to type, or afraid your too lazy to read it all. Either way, there's lots going on around here. The week before Thanksgiving, Jimmy got 3 new molars. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, Jimmy's bottom side teeth finally showed up! In 2 weeks, we went from 6 teeth to 11. He's been a real trooper! We wouldn't have even known except I keep an eagle's eye on them so I can record the date that each tooth came in. I'm so afraid I'm going to miss one (silly).

Jimmy's gotten great at the stairs. He goes up and down on his own. It takes a while, though, because he likes to stop and hang out, sit and talk to you, pick up Mollie hair, etc. Today, he was jabberring his way down the stairs, so I grabbed the video camera. Of course, that shut him up totally.

Speaking of jabberring, while we were home, his language went on to another new level. He woke up Thanksgiving morning repeating every word we said. The next day we took him to the car show and he told us all about every car. He used to say, "Carrrr, Tru-uck" when we were driving. At the car show, it turned into "Cool Car", "Kit Car" and Truck" - very articulated, not just sing-songy. We realized that most of what he said, only James and I understood, but at the car show, my dad was carrying him and he was pointing and repeating "Fr trk" over and over. We looked and Dad said, "Oh, Firetruck, yep, that is a firetruck" and he stopped. On the next aisle, there was an antique firetruck. It's crazy what all the kid sees, knows, notices, and now communicates to us!!!

At the top of the stairs, (and slides - which is where this started), he says, "Ready" and then on each step he says, "Wee." It's his own little indoor slide. Which is nice, because it's flippin' cold here! I'm not playing outside at the park with him - which has caused quite a few tears here, "Outdide, outdide!!!" His little tantrums are kind of cute. We were worried, the week before Thanksgiving, he had started having a couple of regular meltdowns a day. Luckily, they were only about 10-15 minutes, but he was really beside himself. We decided he was entering his "Terrible Twos," but now I think it may have just been all those teeth!