These are a few of my favorite things

J's favorite food is rice pudding. His favorite colour is yellow. His favorite friend is his panda bear. His favorite non-panda related toy is his yellow schoolbus (it has the wind up and move feature). If it is not available, he enjoys any other cars, and really loves all of the matchbox cars that L&P gave him for Christmas.

J enjoys his Mr. Potato-Head. He likes putting the features in odd places, pointing at them, and explaining them to us. "Nose", he will say, even though the nose is positioned squarely on the top of Mr. Potato-Head's head.

J loves the kitchen fireplace. He refers to it as the "Hot", and always insists that the "Hot" be on when he is eating.

J also loves Cheerios. He calls them "Cheetos", and would eat nothing but rice pudding, Cheerios, milk, cookies, apple turnovers (affectionately termed "apple-cookie"), and potato chips if he were allowed. Getting nutritious foods into our little guy is a lot of work, since he only really wants to eat junk. But we do our best. At least, he should be gaining weight given his preferred foods!

J thinks cleaning up is great fun. Sometimes in the middle of playing, he will suddenly announce "Clean-up", and put all of his toys away in their proper bins. Then he dumps them all out on the floor again.

J adores vehicles, Pooh bear, puppies, kitties, pianos, and daycare. He has two special little friends at daycare - Ava and Bridget. He calls for them regularly.

He loves books, and usually refers to them by color or content ("Blue book", "Blue ball", "Puppy", "Man", "Tractor", "Bumble-bee", etc.)

J has learned many niceties at daycare. He says "Hi" and "Bye-bye" to everything. He also says "Please" and "Thank you" for every nice thing that he wants or that happens. And he recently realized that shoes should not be worn in the house.

He has gotten more independent of late. He tries to put on his own socks, feeds himself with a spoon whenever possible, and prefers to sleep by himself rather than to snuggle. If he needs something, he will ask. "Help", he says. And then, we are expected to step in and offer assistance. He goes up and down the stairs by himself now, preferring to slide down on his tummy like a toboggan rather than to crawl down step by step.

This week, I caught J trying to use his crib activity centre as a step to get out of the crib. I removed it. He misses it.

I must go now. J is getting into stuff again!