The boy likes feeding dogs their treats.  No matter what size the dog, he likes feeding them their treats.  The only dogs we let him do this with are dogs we know very well.  Still, he’s careful with his fingers and finds it pretty exciting.

This weekend, he was feeding my father’s dogs their cookies.  The dogs are a bit taller than him, and much heavier, and still quite young and excitable. There is a lot of action going on.  But the boy still wants to do it.  He even makes sure to feed each of the dogs.  Feeding just one isn’t acceptable - he wants to make sure they both get a treat from him.  To the point that he’ll deny one dog a treat, which is a little risky given their relative sizes.  But things worked out okay.

Right - the language part.  We’ve taught him “all done” as both a sign and now he says it as well. But it’s something that has always been conveyed by him about his feeding time (he’s all done) or by us, about something he wants (watermelon’s all done!)

Though, over the weekend, with these dogs running around him wanting more treats, and in the center of their tornado, he was in the middle shouting “cookies all done” and making his sign for “all done” as well.  It was nice to seem him shift his point of view for the phrase…though, the dogs didn’t really get the message.

Sal’s had this Elmo and Friends Look and Find book for a while. He picked it up again this morning to read so we sat down. And we talked about the book for probably 5 minutes, before even opening it up. The cover is just that interesting.

I helped me realize how good these “look and find” books are. There are just a lot of things going on on every page - that there are endless conversations one can have about the page. And that’s the beauty of the book. Sometimes I’ve found it difficult to strike up a conversation with Sal, as I don’t feel as comfortable with the one way communication.  Though this book has enough things going on in it that it is really easy for me to feel comfortable talking to him about the pages.  Let’s look at the juggling bugs or the dinosaur floaty and how that can help when swimming or let’s count the ladybugs on the page.

It also is crazy to see how perceptive he is. There is a parade page and many things are going on. There is a lady with a fruit hat - that has bananas in it. So we’ve talked about her crazy banana hat in the past. But one day, when I was asking him where the banana was, he found a guy on the street watching the parade, eating a banana. Turns out there’s a bunch of bananas on the page - and discovering them is part of the joy of re-reading this book over and over again.

Counting. Colors. Animals. Activities. All covered in this book - and it has been a fun process watching Sal develop different interests as we’ve been reading the book. Today, he pointed out that me and Grover both wear glasses and we talked a bit about that.

But even better, I’m looking forward to what comes up next time we read the book…or, since Amazon’s having a buy 3 get 1 free sale - we’re getting more look and find books. Cars, Finding Nemo (I’m figuring that will have lots of sea animals in it - which should be a kick) and well, Batman seems a little too early for the guy, but there’s a Dora look and find as well as a Disney friends one. Though he hasn’t seen the movies Cars or Finding Nemo, we figure the books will be interesting enough on their own.

Bet he will think so too.

Tags: parenting,, child, development