Dear Jack,
You sing now! Before, you would only hum and musically said, “Doo, doot, doo!” This week though, you actually sang lyrics. I love to sing and hearing you sing and singing with you makes me just about as happy as I’ve ever been. You know the chorus of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” in part to the book Gee and Grandpa gave you for Christmas. You don’t quite say all the words right (“frolicked” usually gets glossed over), but you sound great.
Speaking of things you got for Christmas, we haven’t written to you about the Christmas we just had. You were very excited about Christmas and Christmas trees, which you called “Chri’mas trees.” Your ornament for 2011 was a giraffe, because giraffes are your favorite animals. It was nice to hear what you had to say about your other ornaments (the owl for ’09 and the gingerbread man for ’10, which you called “the cookie man”), because you hadn’t really been interested in Christmas before. You also got an ornament of Buddy from “Dinosaur Train.” The ornament you paid the most attention to though was one that Daddy and I got several years ago in Yosemite National Park. It’s wooden and has a bit of a twig that sticks out of it. It was low enough on the tree that you could reach it and you kept pretending you were pumping lotion out of it. You would tip the ornament into your hand and then rub your hands together. Then you would turn to us and say, “Want some?”
You got lots of nice gifts, but I think your favorites were your chalkboard easel, a couple of books, a Bullseye that makes horse sounds, and a matchbox sized Lightning McQueen. McQueen rarely leaves your hand. In fact, his paint is already chipping off and you’ve barely had him a month. He went with us on our trips to Chattanooga, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Anything with stripes is a road and you can often be found running McQueen along a flat surface, whispering “I am speed. Cha-cow!” Sometimes you actually say “Ka-chow,” but “Cha-cow” is much more common.
Some other things you say a lot are:
What are you saying about?
Like the same!
Oh, I got! (To mean, “Oh, I get it!”)
What’s this? (About things you know and things you don’t.)
I love that you talk a lot sometimes and other times you’re really quiet. You play well alone sometimes, but sometimes you want us to play, too.
We had a lot of fun traveling this month. We’ve been to three different aquariums and you’ve been surprising Gee and Grandpa by saying things like, “I want to go fishing and catch a beluga whale.” You liked the music in New Orleans. One man even played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” for you on his trumpet. When you heard a couple singing “This Is the Day the Lord Has Made,” you recognized it and said, “Mommy, like you sing!” Oh, and when we took our first stroll down a street in the French Quarter, you said, “Like the bookstore!” because the only street you ever walk down is the one where I have my store.
Life is good when you’re around, sweet boy.
Love, Mommy
