I don't know if this is exactly a developmental milestone, but it is a good thing for me the mom: As of tonight Jackson can match puzzle pieces to their slots in a puzzle. He doesn't have the manual dexterity to snap them in yet, but turtle goes on the turtle hole, barn goes to the barn spot, orange fish goes to the orange fish
. Whee! I celebrate mostly because this means there's hope of him someday helping me put away puzzles instead of just pulling them off the shelves, dumping out all the pieces, making little piles of them, and then wandering off to his next project. :)He's also had a leap in the past couple of days where he actively solicits vocabulary and is able to then volley the word back immediately, rather than grunting in acceptance and then actually deploying the word or sign days later. I can say "magnet" and he'll say "manna" and then we can do that for two or three rounds as he slightly refines the sound. I taught him "salmon" at breakfast and then my friend A. came over and we had sushi, and when I mentioned salmon again, Jackson delivered a version of "samman" that was completely intelligible to a non-family-member grownup.
I introduced Harry the Dirty Dog
for the first time today and Jackson loved it. In addition to "DOG!!!" there are lots of background trains and construction sites and dirt and boy things that I probably never appreciated when I read it as a little girl. I was also pleased to discover than I can actually sign a fair number of words in a short children's story, thanks to the instructional miracle that is Signing Time! On a related noted, I bought an inexpensive bookstand at Office Depot to free up my hands when reading aloud, and now not only can I sign--which I think reinforces some words and/or slows me down to make the reading more comprehensible to a little one--but Jackson can really see the pictures. When I'm holding a book I think the angle is ever changing and it bounces around quite a bit, but the bookstand lets him really gaze at illustrations and dig into the detail. (Also, when I'm in the kitchen and he's snacking on Cheerios or whatever he can look at books without getting his adorable sticky fingers all over 'em.) We were reading Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm
(grew up with The Year at Maple Hill Farm
, never read this followup before, LOVE IT SO MUCH), and when I went to get more food, I left the book open to a horse page because he loves neigh-neighs. When I came back he signed apple and lo and behold, when I looked closely I saw that one of the illustrations depicted a girl feeding a horse an apple. Anyway, yay bookstand. I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but now I love it, and I think it's a great addition to our mealtime readalouds!
famously advises singing the alphabet song every time you change a diaper. I have never actually remembered to do this, but it certainly seems like a great plan.
, Museum Shapes and the mysteriously out-of-print Museum Colors
by H.A. Rey
, by Louise Bates Ames, who's the mind behind those "your kid year by year" books. She sorta seems like the 
is because I try to read Jackson at least one poem every weekday (I fail miserably but I try) and because I'm running low on stuff that's appropriate that I haven't already read in 
(4) The six books from the Eric Carle "My Very First Book of" series will be held back for at least year, at which time the kid could possibly grasp the "matching" conceit of books, and/or have the manual dexterity to do all the page flipping.
first, and then I ordered some more from Paperback Swap, and I'm stoked to have found these four others at the thrift store. He doesn't hear a word I say when I read the meager text, but he loves them puppets.
is in remarkably good condition for being a pop-up-ish book. It's definitely been read, but everything appears to be intact!
(a version of the book with original watercolors from before the first edition), 
(colors! elephants! colored elephants!) and at long last, 
, which I have been hoping to find forever. (It says on the cover "over one million copies sold" so you'd think it'd be pretty easy to find, right?) BTW, I really like the latest book from the couple that wrote Cloudy (they publish together only rarely!): it's called 
and it's a return to form after the 
debacle. 
, which we just checked out from the library. It received Jackson's highest rating which is a "more!" request immediately following the reading of "The end!"
Interesting development in our read-alouds is that Jackson is getting interested in more complex books, but he really doesn't have the attention span for me reading the exact text. So we're reading pictures. I flip through the book in question--we're doing a lot of 
and original-flavor 
. It's veddy veddy British, but I love the whimsy (some of the birds are birds in a baby's mobile or birds on the pot of afternoon tea), and Alice Melvin's illustration style. In particular, her geese remind me of my beloved Provensens. Long story short, Jackson and I both really liked these. Jackson told me that crows say "caw-caw" while we were looking at it tonight, which is the first time that he's revealed he knows this information (he learned it from 
by Pat Hutchins, not to mention our local, very active murder of crows). He also liked looking for extra objects, like a picture of an owl or a cat sleeping on a couch. In addition to the great textured illusrations, I loved the lyricis, which makes it fun for me to read in between counting, counting, counting. (I count from one to whatever number is on every page, so there's a lot of good repetition.
: I consider MWB to be nothing less than a poet and this is one of my faves by her. The illustrations by the Provensens are also wonderful. I came across a version of this book with pictures by another illustrator and it wasn't nearly as magical.
: More of a chameleon love story than a teaching book, but who cares?
and 
. These both have a mix of great paintings and simple photos or graphics, and Jackson really likes them both. He had this hilarious epiphany while looking at Van Gogh's The Starry Night, which is the painting for blue in the Explore book. He said, "Moon? MOON!" and I swear I could see him thinking, "OOOOOoooh, a MOON! I've heard so much about it and here it is!!"