What?!

Seth is 20 months old now, but hardly talks at all.  As such I think we assume he doesn't understand much, since he doesn't tell you much. However, tonight Seth gave Caleb a little letter O from our magnet collection on the fridge and said, "O!"

Ever since he stopped taking his morning nap and I have been homeschooling Corbin and Makelle in the morning he has started watching some little alphabet shows that we have to keep him occupied and distracted while we work.  We also have the magnetic letters on the fridge the kids play with a lot, foam letters in the bathtub and lots of books about letters that we read, so he has been pretty well exposed to the alphabet letters.

Still, we assumed it was just a coincidence, since 'O' is one of the sounds he can easily make, so to test him we put the O back on the fridge with all the other letters and mixed them up and told him to find the O again.  This time he grabbed the O and the zero and handed them to Caleb.  We tried a few more times and he found the O or 0 every time.

He was unable to find any other letters we asked him for, but I was still a little amazed.  I forget that just because he doesn't talk, doesn't mean he doesn't understand.

(Even in his baggy hand-me-down pajamas with an irritated runny nose, he is still so dang cute!)

Yea!

Seth usually tells us when he has stinkies.  The past few times he told us right before he went to the bathroom in his diaper... ergo it is time to start potty training again.  The first time I put him on the potty he freaked out and wouldn't stop screaming and trying to get off.  So we have let him play with the potty like it was his personal little chair for the past couple of weeks and then today I decided to get brave and take off his diaper.  He had three accidents on the floor, but he used the potty twice.

He throws his hands in the air and says, "Yea!" whenever he is proud of himself, so we all gave him an overly enthusiastic "Yea!" for his success.  We have a long way to go still, but with any luck he can be close to potty trained by the time this baby gets here in three more months.  I dread the thought of two in diapers!

Bites

We have a rule in our family that you have to eat one bite of each food on your plate per year old that you are.

This afternoon at lunch Makelle didn't want to eat her potatoes and was disappointed to realize that she now has to eat 4 bites, rather than 3, since her birthday was on Saturday.

So while she sat at the table for longer than necessary trying to choke down an entire extra bite of food the kids came up with a new song:

You've had a birthday, cry boo hoo.
You have to eat more food today.
One year older and one more bite,
Happy Birthday, to you!

School Work

Looking back I want to document the kids' progress in their school work, so for my memory's sake here is Makelle doing her reading for today: