Ethan,
Baby C,
Ethan Bear,
Littlest boy,
My baby.
This post is about you!
Those who know the trio personally know that Ethan is a charmer. He had classic good lucks from the day he was born. He's got eyelashes a mile long and a giggle to boot. He hugs the longest, kisses the best and his sweet little voice could just melt you. (That is, when he's not screaming.) He's also a boy of very few words. Sure he talks, and sure, he's learning more constantly, but compared to his brother and sister, he is a dude of very few words.
Ethan is on his own timetable, kind of always has been. He hit all of his milestones last. We worried that he would never roll over, and then that he'd never sit up, or crawl, but by the time it came to walking, etc., we had him all figured out. We stopped worrying because we knew he'd get there...on HIS time. Such is the case with his speech. But as with everything, every now and again, you get a surprise.
The big thing in their world right now is language and speech. Interestingly, our triplets seem to represent all ends of the speech spectrum. We have Hunter speaking in sentences, Colton using mostly 2 and 3 word phrases and Ethan concentrates on one but is now venturing into 2-3 word phrases. To be totally honest with you, the only reason I even mildly care about their speech is that we are on somewhat heightened alert because of Colton's cleft lip and palate and how it may affect his speech. So he and I see a speech pathologist at CRS where the rest of his cleft lip/palate team reside. If it wasn't for that, I really doubt we'd even be talking about actual development, but rather we'd be simply enjoying the big and little progresses each kid is making.
And this blog is about one of those big progresses...Ethan's, to be exact.
The other day, Ethan brought me a book and nestled his little self into my lap where I sat criss cross on the couch. I read him the title (as all good kindergarten teacher mommies do) "Whoops", and before I could turn the page, his grubby little finger was pointing to the 'O' and his little tiny voice was saying /O/. And then he pointed to the other 'O' and again said '/O/.
At this point I'm saying "Good job Ethan! You found the O's! (All the while, I'm very surprised that he even knows the letter O, but I'm attributing it to the fact that we always talk about O when we spell Colton's name. )
As I go to turn the page again, that little finger stops me once more, as it heads to the fine print at the bottom of the page in the sentence, "A Happy Bugs Sparkle Book" by Jane Edgecomb and Noeline Cassettari.
Well son of a gun, wouldn't you know it? He found all the little o's in those words too! Again I praise him because really, I'm totally floored.
But then, I hear that little voice say, "dubba you", "pee", "eth", "eye". Stop me dead in my tracks why don't you, Ethan. He knew all the letters in the title! (I'm giving him credit for the exclamation point which he called 'i', cuz really? It looks like an 'i' when you're 2. And are standing on your head.
So I of course, am totally beaming! That's 6 letters for my little boy whom I've barely heard speak real words on a terribly frequent basis.
Well, it got better. My mom and Al recently built the kids a new kiddie table upon which they put ABC stickers in random fashion all over the table top.
As I picked the kids up the other day after work, we thought it would be fun to "quiz" Ethan again. So we'd point to a letter and say, "What's that?" And at least 12 times, he responded correctly!
Now fast forward to Friday night. Our friends the Pearsons came over to play, (and maybe have a drink) and work on our classroom websites. At one point, with both of our laptops out, and Ethan making his way into my lap, I decided to open up a keynote presentation of the letters of the alphabet. It's the tool I use to test my kindergartners on their letters, basically one letter on each page, out of order.
One slide at a time, I showed it to Ethan, and letter after letter after letter, he recited correctly. 21 out of 26 capital letters correct! And the ones he got wrong? For V, he says Y, U he says W, etc. I repeated the quiz with the lower case letters and he got about 13 out of 26 correct and is now up to about 16 out of 26 lower case letters correct!
Can you just tell how proud I am of him?
So you wanna know how he did it? And no, I am not getting paid to say this. I just really believe in the product so I wanna share it.
About a year ago, my friend Anabelle loaned me some videos called "Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Colors, and Meet the Shapes." They are nothing fancy, and the simplicity is almost unbelievable. And yet, they sit and watch these videos almost as intently as they watch Toy Story.
(This is them, glued to Meet the Numbers)
And boy, are they are learning. Not just their letters. He knows shapes, numbers and a few colors. The claim on the product states that "A study of over 50 babies and toddler, who watched Meet the Letters, resulted in over 90% of these children having complete upper and lowercase letter recognition by or before the end of the two month study. Many learned their letters in less than two weeks."
I realize the proof is in the pudding and I'm going to try and videotape him doing it, but I'll be darned if I can get a video to post to my blog...it hasn't worked for me in about a year....
Anyhoo, if you want to check out these videos for your kids aged 9 months to 5 years, go to
www.preschoolprepco.com.
Ethan Bear, your WHOLE family is so stinkin proud of you...the sleeping giant...that's you. Quietly observing the world around you and then BAM! There you are knowing all kinds of stuff...what's next? The Periodic Table of Elements?
Love you, baby boy. :)
(Now, just in case you thought that was too boastful a post, I'll go ahead and tell you that after naps today, I walked into their nursery and there was my smart Ethan, butt naked from the waist down, his poop on the floor, smiling proudly.) There. Back to reality. :)
Day 2...CHECK!
