Amazing

What a truly awesome week it's been. Jack's verbal comprehension and communication skills have increased dramatically.

For one thing, he simply gets it. Anything and everything! He understands what we're saying and is almost always completely engaged in his interactions. It's no longer us talking at him, it's conversations back and forth.

He speaks in sentences more and more. Last night, Hans was trying to corral Jack into bed and Jack said "not yet." Hans asked him when it would be bedtime, and Jack answered "when the timer goes off" (we've been using a kitchen timer for some "time to..." backup and it works really well).

He understands time issues. We'll go the dentist and then go to the post office and then go home. Or to the playground after nappytime. He gets that.

He often knows what he wants and, with increasing frequency, asks for it politely. After nap, when I ask him if he wants a snack, he'll say (with great excitement) "crackers and cheese stars and cheese and pickles... please!"

He's more agreeable to change, even big changes. We've been trying to get him weaned from his binkeys for a few months, and although he has used them less and less, he has still requested them at nap and bedtime, and several other points during the day. Yesterday at naptime I noticed his 2 binkeys had holes in them. So into the trash they went, and I told Jack why. "We have no more binkeys," I said. And he was kind of quiet. "Beeboo bit a hole in binky," he said. "Yup," I said. "And we don't have any more." And that was it. No crying, no whining. We had the same kind of dialogue at bedtime last night and naptime today. I guess we hit that issue at the right time!