Week in Review

Grafton has made a number of small developmental leaps over the last week or so, which we thought would be worth recording.

Starting with the most important (at least to his parents), Grafton has learned to identify the feeling of a lumpy diaper.  While most questions these days are met with an immediate "No!", on occasion, Grafton will now respond to a diaper change query with a reserved, drawn out, "yeeeaaahh", and a shy smile.  Just yesterday he was introduced to a training potty, and started acting out appropriate usage techniques with his small baby doll.

On the academic side of things, Grafton has started to learn and recite, in ascending order, the first three members of the set of positive integers.  We're not convinced he understands the meaning of each number's value, but he is able to count homogeneous set of objects of size N, where N <= 3.

But enough about mathematics.  On Father's day, Grafton enjoyed his first experience in a pool.  Nana and Mama took him to the community pool on Harrington Road.  After some initial trepidation, he warmed up to the idea, and eventually he was flying over the surface of the water in a plastic, floating airplane.  Six days later, he relived the experience with Nana.

Grafton's memory and recall of people and events is becoming more apparent every day.  On Thu, we were explaining to him that it was his last day with his current teacher, Rachel.  We asked him if he knew who his new teachers would be and he told us "Grayson", which was exactly right.  So he really is  beginning to understand non-trivial questions and conversational ideas.  When we reminded him about his second new teacher, Mitch, he told us "tar", which of course meant "guitar"--the instrument that Mitch plays everyday at school for his toddlers. (Grafton got a preview of this during recent "transition" days.)

We've started to let Grafton play in our cars while they're parked in the garage.  He really enjoys sitting up in the front seat, and even climbing over to the driver's seat.  Every time he does this, though, he demands us to "go!"  Once, while he and his Daddy were sitting in the back seat together, I tried to explain to him that we couldn't go because I would have to be in the driver's seat in order to make the car move.  Unprompted, he exclaimed, "keys!", so somehow he's already learned this association.  (Probably because every time we get into Mama's car, with Daddy driving, Daddy asks Mama for the keys.)  Somewhat related, Grafton likes to walk into the garage and point out which car is Mama's and which one is Daddy's.  Yesterday, while in Otis, he attributed the white Subaru to Nana, saying "Nana's car".  Oh, and of course, he counted three of its four wheels, as we walked around it with Nana.  On Wednesday, Grafton's maternal grandparents arrived at our house.  Grafton, coming home from daycare with Daddy and Baba, was refusing to get out of his car seat.  Daddy, seeing that the grandparent's car was in the driveway, knew that it might provide the necessary excitement to convince Grafton to agree to a car seat extraction and egress maneuver, and said "Look! Is that Baba and Grandpa's car over there!?"  Smiling, he put his arm up to be lifted out, and then ran over to the silver Honda, and commented how "Bab's car" was "shiny".

This morning, Grafton gave us a few insightful one-liners.  While bouncing up and down on the couch, Mama explained that he needed to exercise caution, lest he fall off the edge and hit his head.  Clearly, he understood the warning, and remembered a similar lesson from one his books, because he retorted "No moaw monkeys jumpa da bed", while simultaneously waving his pointer finger at Mama.  The same morning, Grafton found himself engaged in an audit of Daddy's wallet, which started with a complete emptying of its contents.  With dollar bills strewn all over the floor, he began performing his accounting task by collecting them all again.  Worried that his accounting techniques would ultimately result in a financial loss for us, Mama requested that he turn over the cash.  Unwilling, he explained "No money", and then "Going shopping".

Finally, today is June 26th, which marks the one year anniversary of Grafton and Nana's two hour tour of Boston's Wang Medical Buildings, on foot (and stroller).