Colors, counting, stairs and slides

I am so proud of my little man. In a matter of two weeks he went from a tiny toddler to a little man all at once. I'm somewhat sad to see my baby all growed up, but mostly I'm just the proudest mother alive. I understand now why mom's brag about their kids' accomplishments. It's not because they think their kid is smarter than yours, or that they want to sound like a great parent, or that they want to prove something. It's because they are so unbelievably proud and amazed at what their child can do that they simply can't keep it to themselves.

These last two weeks have been major learning weeks for my son and this is his proud momma bragging to the world about them. First he learned his colors. This did not happen very quickly. We've been working on that for months. Naming the colors of all his balls, blocks, toys crayons etc. But I would say he has finally mastered that. He knows most of the colors, especially yellow, pink and purple. He still gets blue and green mixed up and he has to be reminded of red sometimes. But I would say most days he know his colors and he's very proud of that.

The second thing to come along was counting. For the longest time we could count to 2 and counted everything 1...2....1...2...1...2. It didn't even occur to me to try going higher until a couple of weeks ago. I added three to our counting of things and he caught onto that right away. We counted to three for a couple of days and then we added four. He picked that up immediately. So the next day I added five, again he figured that out instantly. After that I decided to go strait to 10 and he's been counting to 10 ever since. He loves to count, he counts everything. Sometimes we miss a number here and there, 5 is the most common one missed. Some days he will even go up to 11. I can't believe he's counting this well and he's not even 2 yet. He can also recognize the written number 2, which amazes me completely. Of course he doesn't understand the meaning of counting quite yet, but he thinks its fun to do it.

The thing we mastered just this weekend was the stairs. We've been working on going up and down stairs for months, but he still wasn't good at it and none of us were confident enough to allow him to do it alone. Well what made me realize that he could be trusted was the day he said "upstairs self" and went upstairs all by himself. I was nervous and listened very carefully in the living room as he went all the way upstairs and into his bedroom. He was there for quite a while and then I heard him coming down the stairs. I reminded him to be careful and I heard him say "blankie tent." I looked up and saw him walking down the stairs with a blankie in his arms, all by himself. Ever since that day he's been going up and down the stairs all by himself to get whatever he wants or to play in his room or whatever. Amazing!! The downside to this is the day I caught him standing on the toilet trying to get the chocolate covered coffee beans that we use as a potty reward.

Today at playgroup however is the proudest moment of these last two weeks. Like I said he's mastered stairs pretty well and so at the play group these last couple of weeks he has spent the time going up and down the steps of the playground equipment. He has asked to go down the slide many times but has always been too scared (probably due to me overreacting and telling him it's too high and to be careful) to go down them without me. Today he overcame his fear. I showed him he has to go up the stairs, sit down at the top and then he could scoot down the slide. This time when he tried to do it by himself I didn't react with anything but praise and encouragement even though the slide he decided to go down was the tallest curly slide at the playground. He did it all by himself just perfectly and when he got to the bottom he shouted "AGAIN!" He of course wanted "mom catch" for quite a while, but by the end of our day he was going up and down all by himself while I sat on the bench and watched. He still stayed a the bottom and smiled at me until I cheered and clapped for him. As much as my stomach was in knots with fear, I was so proud of my little man!!!