Monkey See Monkey Do...

There is no other way to describe Casey right now. Mostly she does whatever Jack does. She tries to say what he says and she tries to do what he does. But she also tries to do the same things that I am doing. I realized I have to think a little bit about what I'm doing when I was scratching Tugger's belly with a hockey stick. Casey thought she should do the same thing but it wasn't quite so gentle. At least she's not chasing Tugger around and whacking him with the hockey stick like Jack did when he was her age.

It's also interesting to see the differences in the way Jack and Casey "learn." When Jack learned to talk, we would continually ask him to say a word. We would repeat it over and over again until I thought I was driving him crazy because I was certainly driving myself crazy. And eventually he would carefully say it, as if making sure that he was saying it correctly. I had never seen a child learn to talk and my expectation of how they did it was a little different from the way Jack learned.

When you ask Casey to say a word, she just goes for it - she says whatever she thinks might sound like what you just asked her. Hence yogurt becomes "yo-yo," blueberries become "boo-boo" and pizza was "pee-pee" for a while. This was more in line with how I thought kids learned to talk. I didn't realize there could be such a difference until Casey came along.

It will be interesting to see how this translates as they get older and go to school. When we started going to the library for story time, Jack wouldn't join in for any of the interactive songs. He just sat and watched for the longest time. Finally, about 2 months passed and he got comfortable with the words and the actions and he started joining the group more.

This week, Jack started classes at The Little Gym. I was worried that he wouldn't listen to the teachers and would be running around crazy (like a couple others). Instead he sat outside the circle and just watched and tried to figure it out. I could see him trying to process it all and make sure he had it right before he tried it. This bit of his personality is so interesting for me to watch. He loved his class and can't wait to go back next week. I'm glad that even though he's not in school yet, he has this little bit of time where he learns to listen to a teacher and how to act in a classroom type setting...and yet he gets a lot of energy out too!