Sam's new tricks

Sam is going through incredible developmental growth right now and is amazing us with new things every day.  For months we've sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and made the spider with our fingers and he's happily watched.  The other day we were in the car and the song came on and I noticed in the mirror that he was sitting in his carseat making the spider with his fingers!  Now he's obsessed with it and starts the spider on his own with his fingers to get us to sing the song.

One of his other favorite songs is "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."  He knows the clapping and stomp your feet parts, but we've also been working on "if you're happy and you know it, say hurray" and raising his arms above his head when we say hurray.  Last night in the bath, we sang the song and all of a sudden he started raising his arms above his heads for the "Hurray" part of the song. 

It just amazes me how connections form in his brain.  There are things that we work on for months with him, like saying "please", "thank you", "up", etc.  He has said "thank you" one time and that was a few months ago.  And then out of nowhere at Little Gym last week, we were doing bubble time and he started saying "bubbles" which is his new favorite word.  We say the word "bubbles" probably 100x less than we say "thank you" - and yet he picks up the word bubbles??? I'm thrilled that he has so many new words, but it is always such a surprise and it feels like there's no rhyme or reason to it. 

His words now include: Mommy, Daddy, No (his favorite), Ok, dog, down, clean up, sure, bubbles, water, shoe, hi, hello (always while he's talking into something shaped like a phone), and a bunch of animal sounds.

His favorite activity is to blow kisses to anyone or anything. He blows kisses to strangers on the street, cars driving by, dogs, the slide, Mimi & Grandpa over the phone, etc.

He also loves to imitate the phone.  The other day we were walking on the sidewalk and saw a teenager holding a cellphone to his ear.  Sam took his hand and put it between his ear and his mouth and said "hello? hello?  hi!" right as we were walking by the kid on his cell.  So funny!