Big stuff...

Yesterday was full of big stuff for Seth. I sat down with him in the living room last evening, and I decided to try the whole ball rolling thing. I hadn't tried it before 'cause I thought you had to be a pretty big boy to learn how to roll a ball. Well, I guess he's a big boy. He caught on pretty quickly. I would push it to him, and it would roll between his legs, and then he figured out how to push it back to me with the back of his hand. He was so thrilled with himself! He'd lean forward and keep batting at it, and if he got it good, and it rolled all the way to me, he would smile. It was an "I rock" kinda smile. We must've done this for 10 minutes.

Every time I say "Yeah!," he claps for himself. I forget this sometimes, and I say "Yeah!" without thinking, and then he's off and clapping. We don't think too much of ourselves around here, no sirree bob. So I was saying it, and he was clapping for himself, and then he'd push it again. Sometimes I wonder about making a big deal out of new things. I mean, I was really praising him over the top. I was smiling so big that my mouth eventually started hurting. But I want him to understand that he's just done something really cool so he'll keep doing it. At this age, it seems like he'll do or say something cool, and then he'll decide he's done it once, and that's enough. So I won't see it again for months. I don't want that to happen with ball rolling. I like ball rolling. It's a good interactive activity that trumps, say, sitting in the Jumperoo and whining.

But that's not all! I know you were waiting with bated breath for the next big announcement. Now, I was a preschool teacher in my past life, and none of my toddler class could put the shapes in the shape sorter at 12 months. They would get frustrated and pull the lid off and just put the shapes in and out. No biggie. So I thought Seth wouldn't be able to get the sorting thing, and I hadn't tried it.

Well, David came home, and he and Seth started playing with this complicated shape sorter that James and Shelly gave him in Texas. You know the kind. We all had it as a kid. I remember it as the red and blue ball that ate my shapes and wouldn't give them back to me. You have to pull it apart to get them to come out again, and I frequently got mad at it because I wasn't strong enough to get that to work. But anyway, it has a ton of different shapes, not just square, circle, star, etc. It has octagons and pentagons and quintuplagons and ovals and maltese falcons and 20 pointed stars. And Seth was sitting there, calmly, and with concentration, and he was putting the weird shapes in the weird holes. All by himself. David would put the particular shape in front of him, but he was the one who got it in there.

Yes, my child is a genius. There is no doubt. It's official. We're calling the IQ testing people tomorrow to have him registered.

A genius who can't yet doing anything but army crawl, but hey, he can put shapes in weird holes. We'll get him a job at a puzzle factory, and his co-workers can carry him around. The genius is fussing now, and his 15 minutes of alone floor time are up, so... catch ya around!