GETTING DUE RECOGNITION

James has been progressing with another milestone over the past few weeks, and there's no doubting now that he knows the names of his toys. Some of them, anyway. We started out by placing 2 of his favorite push-and-go toys in front of him and asking him to "show us the alligator" (as opposed to the caterpillar). That worked a few times. Then we decided to increase our "labeling" efforts and started repeating ourselves over and over and over. We label EVERYTHING now. And it's working. Now I can ask James to "go get your xylophone" and he will. If I say "play Mommy some music", he does. He can successfully point to the monkey on his crawl-to-cruise jungle, roll a ball to us when asked, and "go get Daddy" (James LOVES to chase his Daddy, in addition to the cats these days).

And speaking of pointing, James has been pointing at EVERYTHING since last weekend (you likely saw the photo of him pointing up at the ceiling in the BEFORE AND AFTER post). As of Friday, he's added a "question" to his pointing... he'll point at an object and say "eh?", and wait for us to name it. Fun stuff.

Yesterday James received a surprise gift in the mail from his Uncle Davey and Auntie T'in. It's called "Scout" and it's a stuffed puppy that you personalize wtih your child's favorite foods and colors and music, etc. James was impressed even before we got him out of the box. Not to mention when we hooked him up to the computer and his little dog tag started lighting up - James was beside himself and couldn't wait to get his hands on him! Here he is pointing at Scout once we set him down in front of him:

Getting a good hold on his ears:

And smiling at his new friend, who, among other things, says "I love you James":

Of course, to us it sounds more like a question... "I love you, James?" Too cute though. Thanks guys, it was awfully nice of you to send James a present on his COUSIN'S 1st Birthday! Happy Birthday Eli, we love you and miss you and hope you had a great party today!!

P.S. Don't mind the excessive drool on James' pajamas today. Poor kid is still teething hard, and we've been wiping slobber and boogers off him all day. And there's only so much you can do...