the couch

Jack's new favorite place is the couch.  He still needs help getting up onto it but is pretty good at getting off . . . and only goes head first every few days now.  He likes to throw himself around on the couch, cover himself in pillows on the couch, sit perfectly still on the couch (for a few seconds, to plot his next move), try to squeeze his way into the cracks of the couch . . . and his new mimicking skills mean he also likes to lay back and pull a blanket up over him (although he does not lie as still as his papa does under that blanket), put a pillow halfway over his head (which his papa does when he falls asleep on the couch watching football), and sit on the couch with remote in hand, pointing the remote at the tv and pushing buttons.

He has two videos that we let him watch -- a sign language video and a petting farm video.  He watches the "animals" video -- as we and, now he, calls it -- every morning while I am preparing his breakfast.  He loves those animals and now can either say the name of or make a sound for most of the animals on it.  I will also turn on Sesame Street maybe once a week.  He likes the music mostly.  In fact he loves music.  He asks me to sing to him by humming a little tune of his own that he has been humming for about two months now at least.  I keep meaning to get that little hum on video or tape, but whenever I am ready for it, it does not come.  It is a specific series of sounds that is always the same and it is as if it is his "word" for music or sing.  He also will make that series of sounds--his own little personal song-- if you simply say the word music.  It is amazing what he understands now.