Little Man

Just some fun things about Jalen Andrew right now:

He has impeccable manners. He is ALWAYS saying

"Thank You" and "Please" without any prompt from

us. I thought that I had pretty good manners too, but

I guess not to his liking, because the other day in the

playroom he handed me a little piece of garbage that

he found on the floor. I disposed of it, and he cocked

his head and asked, "Dank you?" "Thank you," I

repeated back, to which he very clearly said, "You're

welcome."

He is talking so much right now. He says a lot of things

in full sentences. He's still quiet around others, but he

can really talk our ears off at home. He repeats

everything we say too, in an effort to gain new vocabulary.

Yesterday as James was reading a book to me, Jalen

Andrew went and got The Busy Spider by Eric Carle,

and as he would turn to a new page, he would make the

sound of the animal on the page, and then look at me

expectantly to see if I had heard him "read" the book.

His two favorite words right now are "MommeEE," and

"No-oh-oh."

Most kids call out "Help!" when they need something, or

they're stuck. Jalen Andrew calls "Help!" very urgently

when he sees me putting away laundry. He actually gets

very frantic about it, and I have to stop what I'm doing,

until he gets his little white basket in his hands to help.

I put the kids clothes' in the basket, tell him who they

belong to, and he dutifully dumps the clothes on the

appropriate bed. What a helper!

He has a great little shoulder shrug that he does when

he's getting into something that he shouldn't be or when

we ask him to do something. It is the funniest thing to

watch! As an example, if we ask him to go get a ball,

he'll shrug his shoulder all the way across the yard, as

he walks to retrieve the ball.

He loves his blankie - we've known that for a long time,

but have recently realized that he desires for us to

love his blankie just as much as he does. He uses it as a

way to get what he wants. For instance, when he used

to request a drink, he would ask for the drink, and then

would place his blanket on my shoulder for him to snuggle

on as we walked to the kitchen. Now he just comes up to

me, and without saying anything, hands me his blanket,

when I put it on my shoulder, he then takes my hand to

lead me to the kitchen. If I should set the blanket down instead

of putting it on my shoulder, he lets me know that that

kind of behavior is unacceptable. In addition to his blanket,

he has recently become quite attached to his Build a Bear

Monkey. Yesterday he brought it to me during breakfast,

and wanted me to give it a drink of milk. And then later,

when we on our way to the mini-van to go do some errands,

he ran back into the house to retrieve his monkey. Funny

that he likes it so much, since a couple of weeks ago,

Rebekah scared him with the monkey, and whenever he

would see it, he would bury his head on my shoulder, and

whine, "Monkey. Monkey," like it was going to get him or

something.

(feeding Cheerios to his babies - notice the raised shoulder)

And the other thing that he does, that just cracks us up,

is that he runs laps around the downstairs. He just runs

and runs and runs for no apparent reason ; it's not as if

he's being chased by the other kids. He's just running for

the "fun of it" and enjoying every minute of it. He actually

runs so many laps that he starts panting - he doesn't

stop though, but continues on running a few more laps,

giggling at himself and panting.