The things they learn

Aaron has a tendency to fill his mouth up with food and request more. What toddler doesn't, really? But Thom is worried about him choking, so if he suspects Aaron is hoarding food in his mouth, he says "Show me your mouth." To which Aaron responds by opening his mouth and making a short, soft little "ah" sound. We didn't realize until he started doing this that Thom and I were saying "ah" when we initially showed him how to let us see what was in his mouth. It's the cutest little "ah" and sometimes we ask him to show us his mouth just to hear him do it.

So today at lunch, I was eating some falafel crumbs (I had made some frozen falafels and they fell apart in the pan). Aaron had had two bites of falafel (which he has eaten from Daphne's Greek Cafe and seemed to like) and decided he was done. But when he saw me eating the falafel crumbs, he wanted one. When I gave him one, he immediately offered it to me. He likes to feed people. On the third piece he was feeding me, he got it almost to my mouth, then pulled it back and went "ah" and showed me his mouth. He was asking me to show him my mouth! I went "ah" and then he gave me the piece. He repeated this for each piece afterwards and seemed quite pleased with himself.

He also surprised me yesterday by trying to get some pacifiers from under his crib. He was playing in his room so I was in there sorting through some hand-me downs. Suddenly, he noticed some pacifiers under his crib (they get pushed - intentionally and not - out the crib on the wall side and end up underneath). He crawled over there and I didn't think he'd be able to get them, but I just sort of watched out of the corner of my eye to see what he'd do.

We keep a toy under his crib that we use to sweep the pacifiers out when they are too far to reach. It is something I found years ago (at Cost Plus, I think) and thought was cool and figured I'd save it for when I had kids. It has a wooden handle attached to a long flexible stick with a wooden snake that is corkscrewed around it. You turn the stick upside down to get the snake to crawl back and forth. It is just the right length to get pacifiers out from under his crib and it was the first thing I had found to use when I first needed to get his pacifiers out from under there

So I notice Aaron is reaching for the snake toy. I figured he saw it and was distracted from his pacifiers by it. But I look over and he is sweeping the stick around under his bed trying to get the pacifiers! They were against the wall and he couldn't manage to get them, but I was still impressed with his attempt. I didn't realize he had learned how we use it. Usually I'm getting them out while he is in the other room or in the crib, but he must have seen one of us doing it and decided to try it out.