Sarah and Adam: The Next Generation

Jasper & Abzug

On the plane back from New Haven, Adam told Jasper a story about Abzug & Medgar (Justin & Autumn's dogs) going to the zoo. It made quite an impression--now every 6 minutes or so he suggests a topic for a new Abzug story--the zoo, an airplane, the train, etc. After a few minutes of a story, we'll move on to something else and Jasper will prompt us to return to the story: "Let's keep going!"

Jasper has really discovered the joy of having an audience, and Gus is naturally the most willing of audiences. Many a meal ends with Jasper shooting pieces of food out of his mouth and watching Gus as Gus cracks up laughing.

At the same time, he's usually really considerate of Gus. Just now Jasper was tossing a napkin up in the air, and Gus wanted it. So Jasper ran into the other room and grabbed a dish towel and gave it to Gus, saying, "This is for Gussy!"

Jasper often tells long elaborate stories, especially when he first wakes up, or he'll be listening to a story and it gives him an idea for a story. When he's making up a story, he speaks in an almost inaudible murmur, interspersed with recent memories. And then certain key words are really emphasized. It ends up sounding like, "whisper whisper whisper and Abzug saw a gorilla and the whisper whisper train was moving VERY FAST whisper whisper CRASH went the whisper RUNNING and the hippopotamus whisper whisper yogurt went SPLAT all OVER the place!" 

Jasper likes to request an ice pack now for any injury, from a stubbed toe on up.

Jasper's long been able to count to 10, and now can count to 20. He's now learning to count objects, which is much harder for him. A few weeks ago there were two choices of how many objects there were: "1" or "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10." Now he can count reliably to 3 objects and occasionally to 4 before jumping to 10, so that's a sort of progress.

Finally, his most common verbal tic is one he picked up from Sylvia, the little girl he spends weekdays with: "Yeah." It's the response to any question he doesn't know the answer to or doesn't feel like discussing.

Gus's language explosion

Gus is having a language explosion, talking all the time (though maybe half of his words are "Da" in one inflection or another). New words include book (and he can sign it as well), no (and shook his head), dog, "Bye-bye dada," some version of Jasper, up, down, and more.

Case in point: Gus loooves Kittyman. He kisses him (open-mouthed, leaving a giant wet spot on K-man's back), and pets him quite vigorously. We say "Gentle, gentle." Gus learns not to pet the cat gently, but rather to say some version of "gentle" while whacking the cat.

Gus has also discovered books. He picks the book off his bookshelf that he wants to hear (a picture book with food--peppers, pears, etc.--cut into the shape of dogs) and demands that we read it over and over, and gets mad if we read a different book.

He's also really physical. His favorite activity is climbing up and down stairs, which he's pretty good at. He's used to going down backwards on his stomach, but he watches Jasper scoot down on his butt and now Gus really wants to scoot down on HIS butt.

Various Gus Milestones

Gus turned one on April 17. Woohoo! He's such a big boy.

He got another tooth on April 5 - the other top tooth. And then around April 15, he got another bottom tooth, so his six teeth are now symmetrical!

He's talking up a storm; words include:
Baba - for bottle, Nana - for mommy / nursing / milk, Wawa - for water, Ki Ca - for kitty cat, All Done, Go, Wow, Yeah, Dada, Da - for that (combined with a lot of pointing), Dog, and more!

Also, he does the baby signs for eat, more, all done, and milk.

Silly little boys

Jasper started playing with his food this morning, spitting little pieces of strawberry across the room. Gus thought that was funny and started to laugh. Jasper thought it was funny that he could make Gus laugh, so he spat more strawberry and started to laugh. The two boys just sat there watching each other and cracking each other up, while Jasper shot strawberry across the room periodically to start it all over again.

Later Adam was carrying Jasper to the car and he was chanting quietly to himself, "I don't know, I don't know." Adam said, "You don't know?" Jasper responded, "I don't have to know."