Yesterday we took our palangga on what might be his last visit to the Children’s Park. His father set him down at once so he is free to go wherever he pleases. It was delightful to watch him run and skip. He has been doing this for a couple of months now, but he seems more sure-footed than ever. What he did for the first time was go up and down a slide all by himself. And he did this not once or twice, but at least six times. On the fourth attempt he learned to land on both feet instead of his rump. We were so proud of him and our cheers and applause naturally spurred him to keep repeating this feat.

This morning I marveled at his other new skills. He can now play with his shape sorters and shape puzzles with a lot of ease. He can say yes, down, and na-na for banana. Most of all he has been very imaginative with his playtime activities, such as climbing over every piece of furniture and emptying drawers and cabinets of its contents so he can re-arrange or pile these on top of each other. He not only understands what I say sometimes, he also follows simple instructions (occasionally when he’s in the mood to impress) like “give it to Mommy” and “come.”

And the hours spent showing him Baby Babble and Little Einstein finally showed results when he started using the sign language for “more” and “all done.”

His favorite channel happens to be Babytv.com, and it’s the only thing that can make him pay attention for 30 minutes. James has a two-minute attention span, and the producers of Babytv knew this about toddlers because every episode average 2 minutes long only.  He has favorite characters like Oliver and the Cuddles, but he gets excited whenever the show features things he has personal experience like balls and shapes. His face literally lit up like a bulb when Pitch and Potch played hide and seek, and shouted “peekabo!” Our favorite activity while watching Babytv.com is singing along, which he is able to do when the lyrics are just la-la-la and na-na-na.

I am so excited to watch him discover not only the environment around him, but more important, what he could do and how he can interact with it.