November activities, blowing, and sign language

We're having a good month of November so far.  We're thankful for our nice warm house as it's cold and rainy outside, but it's also fun to bundle up and go out for walks.  TongJie got to experience his first snow on Monday, when we got a little snow overnight and had about 1/2" or so in the morning.  It was hard to tell what he thought of it, but he didn't seem to mind being in it.  It didn't last long, as it warmed up later in the day and the snow quickly melted, but I'm sure we'll get more snow this winter so he'll get plenty more opportunities to check it out.

Also on Monday, we went to the Java Station, which is one of our favorite coffee places, because Jeff didn't have school in observance of Veterans' Day.  TongJie likes that they have fun toys and books there.

TongJie's speech therapist has been working with him on blowing.  He's learning to develop the muscles in his mouth to form his lips into an "o" shape, which will help him with forming certain sounds and with learning to suck.  She brought one of those party favor blowers for him this week, and after I demonstrated it for him and he tried it a few times, he was able to make it work.  He was SO proud of himself, and kept walking around the house blowing on it after she left.  It will be really neat when he's finally able to suck through a straw one of these days.  In the video, he demonstrates his blowing abilities as he sits on his changing table.

On the subject of TongJie's speech therapy and communication, his sign language vocabulary is now up to 85 words!  We keep track of the words on our computer, and we've been counting words that he uses on his own with no modeling directly before.  Part of the way into our list (middle of August), we became more consistent with keeping track of the dates that he learned each new word.  It's interesting how he sometimes goes for several days with no new words, and then one day he'll sign two or three new words all in the same day.  Me and Jeff have to keep learning new signs so we can keep teaching them to him.  It's been lots of fun.  Here are the 85 signs he knows so far:

1.       More (5/26/12)

2.       All done

3.       Bye / hi

4.       Shoes (6/20/12)

5.       Cat (6/24/12)

6.       Mama (6/26/12)

7.       Eat

8.       Dog

9.       Milk

10.   Daddy

11.   Please

12.   Diaper

13.   Fan

14.   Help

15.   Water

16.   Brush teeth

17.   Pain/hurt

18.   Cheese

19.   Down

20.   Hear

21.   Clean up

22.   Banana (8/14/12)

23.   On (light) (8/19/12)

24.   Cold (8/20/12)

25.   Car (8/21/12)

26.   Ball (8/21/12)

27.   Outside (8/21/12)

28.   Socks (8/24/12)

29.   Off (light) (8/25/12)

30.   Fish (8/26/12)

31.   Hat (8/27/12)

32.   Up (8/27/12)

33.   Ice (8/29/12)

34.   Gentle (8/30/12)

35.   Meat (8/30/12)

36.   Cracker (8/30/12)

37.   Fruit (8/31/12)

38.   Bird (9/6/12)

39.   Bag (9/9/12)

40.   Wheel (9/10/12)

41.   Swing (9/12/12)

42.   Wait (9/14/12)

43.   Where (9/16/12)

44.   Bug (9/18/12)

45.   Hot (9/19/12)

46.   Chicken (9/22/12)

47.   Change (9/23/12)

48.   Dirty (9/26/12)

49.   Exercise (9/27/12)

50.   Cookie (9/30/12)

51.   Nose (10/4/12)

52.   Poop (10/5/12)

53.   Horse (10/5/12)

54.   Book (10/6/12)

55.   Yogurt (10/6/12)

56.   Go (10/6/12)

57.   Stop (10/7/12)

58.   Eye (10/14/12)

59.   Leaf (10/21/12)

60.   Fall down (10/22/12)

61.   Potato (10/22/12)

62.   Cow (10/23/12)

63.   Drink (10/24/12)

64.   Blocks (10/25/12)

65.   Thank you (10/26/12)

66.   Drum (10/26/12)

67.   Orange (10/31/12)

68.   Blanket (11/1/12)

69.   Table (11/2/12)

70.   Off (take something off) (11/2/12)

71.   Music (11/3/12)

72.   Ear (11/4/12)

73.   Nut (11/4/12)

74.   Key (11/4/12)

75.   Open (11/6/12)

76.   Cereal / oatmeal / mush (11/7/12)

77.   Bike (11/7/12)

78.   Train (11/9/12)

79.   Yellow (11/10/12)

80.   Baby (11/10/12)

81.   Jump (11/11/12)

82.   Mouse (11/12/12)

83.   Bear (11/13/12)

84.   Shirt (11/14/12)

85.   Red (11/14/12)

Here is a picture of him signing "banana" while he happily eats his breakfast, and another one of him signing "bike" on his tricycle:

What else have we been up to lately?  Let's see . . . Albert got a haircut:

TongJie has been getting some use out of his fun dog and cat costumes from our friends Kevin and Katie.  Here he's wearing the cat costume:

Lots more reading:

And going for walks, of course:

And folding laundry one evening, I put a diaper cover over the top of TongJie's pants.  That got a lot of laughs!