Aviation Museum Again

Today after Mass, Chris, John, and I went with the grandparents to the aviation museum. Here John spotted another Jeep, just as he's been spotting them accurately for days. He even said "Jeep!" to a modern Jeep Cherokee, which has quite evolved since the classic style, and to a safari Jeep in his zoo book which is decorated with zebra stripes!

Playing inside an old cockpit:

The voice in the background telling cool aviation stories is that of Pop-Pops:

John is in such an interesting phase of being extra demanding of my attention and clingy, especially at night, but being Mr. Independent alternatively. (My aunt suggested that it is precisely because he is so newly independent in his adventures that he needs to run back to Mama for a security check-in.) For example, when his grandparents were packing up to leave, John saw Pop-Pops walk outside to his van with luggage. John opened the door, ran outside, paused to turn to me with a confident "bye bye!" and a wave, then ran to the van like he was going to leave with his grandparents. Of course, I felt slightly vindicated when John accidentally set off the car alarm and was so terrified that nobody could calm him down but me. So I'm not totally chopped liver, thankyouverymuch.

Counting. I have not been bothering to teach John numbers or colors or anything academic in a very structured way. We might read 50 books a day (at John's request), but I don't want to be a flash-card kind of parent, you know? However, some of his books certainly contain counting in them and I might see a picture and read, "Three green frogs, one, two, three." That's about it. Well, just yesterday John seemed to begin counting to three! Tonight I tested him with some blocks because I was curious about what was going on. I'd put out the first block and John would say, "one." I'd put out a second block and John would say, "two." I'd put out a third block and John would say, "tree" (three). The fourth block and beyond resulted in no response. I'm amazed! I think it shows not just memorization of words, like in a song, but the actual nascent understanding of quantifying objects! Please know that I don't report this learning to brag at all, but because I'm a first-time mom and these moments still seem to me a bit like my house cat suddenly began reading Shakespeare.