Growing in Leaps and Bounds

Some days, I feel like I'm not doing enough with the boys to enhance their learning. We read, spell, color, and do activities, but some days work is so consuming I feel like I'm giving them the short end of the stick. This morning, Jimmy climbed up to the kitchen table and closed my laptop and said "all done" while I was in the middle of writing an email. It was a big eye opener that while they are awake, I need to be focused on them.

But then there are times when Jimmy completely surprises me and I have to give myself a little credit.

He finally knows his colors - blue, green, purple, yellow, red, brown, orange, black and pink. We have worked on those, and worked on those, and when we would ask him what color something was, he would always respond red. It was cute at first, but then I became worried that he wasn't grasping the concept. I even toyed with the idea that it became a "game" to him to always say the wrong color. And then, a few days ago, he got the color right every time. I even hear him talking to himself and saying the color of toys he's playing with.

He also can count to ten. We count lots of times during the day, and for quite some time he could count from one to four and then would skip five and count six through ten. The other afternoon, while Jackson was napping, he was playing on the floor and counted one through ten, no hesitations or problems.

Jimmy also surprised me with his knowledge of shapes. He can identify a triangle, square, circle, star and diamond.

And as if that wasn't all enough, he floored me when he spelled Jack. Clear as day. J-A-C-K. When we're up in their room getting ready for bed or playing, we constantly spell their names over and over. "James" is on the wall above Jimmy's crib and Jackson has just "Jack" (I wasn't motivated enough to add the "son"to his name - it took forever to get those letters up straight!). I guess when Jimmy is lying in his crib and he looks out, he can clearly see Jack's name and over time has engrained how to spell it. Not bad for not even two!

While there may be days I feel like I'm not giving them the ultimate learning experience throughout the day, there are also days when one of them will do or say something that makes me realize the things I'm saying over and over really are clicking. I feel so blessed to have children who are so eager to learn!