LAST SEMESTER!!!

So I have 2 1/2 weeks down of my 15 last weeks of Nursing school. It still seems so far away, especially as I debate every night whether I want to play with Shade or get a head start on my ridiculously pointless, huge projects or impossibly large amounts of reading. Shade is getting a lot better doing things by himself now, though. He especially likes to read books while I do "mommy's homework" and will sit there and reiterate the story as he remembers/understands it. He seems to be picking up new stuff about every day.

I have been meaning to place some videos of Shade on here - they take a long time to upload on this computer because of the lower-priced internet connection that we chose - so I'm not real motivated.

Until then, here are some recent highlights.

He is finally getting the idea of counting. He started counting at the table when we would eat together - there are 3 of us, so he would count: 1, 2, 3 forks or spoons, cups, whatever. Then he caught on and started counting his books (we got a small clip of that). He gets 10 and 11 mixed up and can't go beyond that by himself, but its still pretty cool.

I can't remember if I wrote about this, but can now navigate (basic) through the starfall.com alphabet site - which is nice to not have to sit there and do it for him over and over and over. He can pick a letter, push enter, and make it through to the end activity that usually requires a mouse or to x out of it. But he loves the end activities where he gets to tell whether it is a 'big letter' or 'little letter' and which side it goes to, or which letter does not belong, or which letter goes where. I don't think we even owned a computer until I was 10.

He has known all the basic animals and their sounds for awhile, but is picking up differences, such as between monkeys and gorillas, different kinds of birds, etc. It is cute. The Beauchamps describe his horse sound as a horse bomb - it kind of sounds like an explosion at the end of the sound.

He has become very polite and often says 'thank you mommy/daddy' whenever we get him things, and will often ask 'tlease' whenever he asks for something. Today he also said 'escuse me' when he burped. He also still spontaneously says 'I love daddy/mommy the most' and gives us hugs and kisses without prompting (he actually just came over and gave me a kiss just now while I was typing...). Although he still laughs when he farts.