Our certificate arrived right after Thanksgiving! What a range of goodies too; including a guide on National Parks for kids, a calendar, a lanyard and Buddy! Thanks again to everyone at the National Park Trust. We now have Buddy in each car posed and ready for any moment an adventure might present itself.

In other exciting Quince news, as you may have seen, Quince is now able to jump. He’s really thrilled by it. Of course, he’s taken a few falls as a result but he’s getting more confident and better each day. Also, more successful each day.

He is going through a toy re-discovery phase at the moment. Instead of playing with them the same way he did previously, he’s trying to see what else they do or just using them completely differently to start. You can see this in the picture of him above. The snail is a toy that is meant to drive itself forward and attract the child to chase it. Instead, Quince pushes the button and does one of two things, dances or pushes and pulls on it as if to vacuum.  Stacking blocks and doing puzzles are a favorite activity around here. Above all else is music. Richard and I decided that Quince’s first crush must be Feist and the Sesame Street version of 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m pretty sure I can not only sing it in my sleep but also the motions of the whole video.

We are gearing up to journey down the path of potty-training! I know, he’s not yet two-years old but he does have interest. Everything that I have heard said that if they express interest no matter the age you should work with it and build from there. For the last three days he has used the bathroom every morning successfully. He is oh-so proud of himself for it too.

Currently, his vocabulary is very small still. Slowly we are building more, he signs please with correct usage 100% of the time now and is starting to understand the use of more. Spoken words outside of the family you would likely only recognize mmmm(for when something is delicious), hi, bye and yeah. He is also more correctly saying and signing all done. Honestly, it is hard for me to judge if someone outside of our family would realize that’s what he is trying to say.

One of his games on the ipod touch is in Chinese, and I’ve noticed him finding the correct object when asked. I’m trying to use more of a mix of Chinese and English with him. My hope is that he will use both with ease and be able to pick up new ones quickly.