In the words of my brother, we have a couple of 'Nerdasauruses!' So far, they have T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus (the way they say this one is our personal favorite), Parasaurolophus and Iguanadon down. Not too shabby!
Owen loves puzzles. I got this Melissa and Doug set at a consignment sale and it was missing one of the pieces, so we only have three of the four puzzles, but he does it every day and gets better every time he does it. He brings me a handful of pieces saying 'hewp mama, hewp... guup (scoop), guk (truck), hewp.' He's so excited when he sees it all come together too. I couldn't help myself, I got him a dinosaur set and a vehicles set from Amazon and they should be here tomorrow. I can't wait to see his reaction!
I worked hard on an ABC book for the boys and thought that I was going to save it for their 2nd birthday, but I decided to give it to them now instead. They loved flipping through all the pages and feeling all the felt, beads and strings. They were making animal sounds (roaring) and naming the objects that they could say too (ball, zebra (ze-boo)). I'm proud of how it turned out and love that they are interested in the finished product!
Owen's determination always surprises me. He has never played with this toy on his own, and there are a lot of options for where to put these pieces... but he got all 10 in on his own! He loves puzzles and I think it's so fun to watch him figure things on out his own, especially when he cheers for himself with every right piece! He's such a little brainiac : )
I'm sure every parent says this... but my kids are brilliant! I'm not kidding - they really are smarter than I would expect a normal 20 month old to be. Owen was lining up the puzzle boards (with no pieces in them) so I started handing him pieces at random. He would look at it and know which board to put it in, then get the exact spot every time. Once, I handed him two dinosaur pieces in a row, then the tail to the fish colors puzzle. He looked at the fish tail, went to put it in the dino puzzle, said 'no' and then put it into the fish puzzle, matching it to the right color and everything! He did four puzzles simultaneously and only mixed up the brown and orange fish tails (they are really close in color). I'm telling you, I have little smartie pants on my hands!
I am amazed at the boys' progressions and improvements every day. It seems like just yesterday they were to clumsy to make a tower or too short to climb up on the couch themselves. They are consistently much cleaner when eating with utensils and are saying so many words (and asking us to say the word of something that they don't know).
Eli was playing with the block tower and you could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he figured out which squares were bigger or smaller than the others. They are both getting really good at transferring more than one block at a time too. They'll stand one on top of the other and move both to the top of the tower together. Great balance work!
