Watching Dominic grow and learn has been the greatest thing about being a mom. I would say that it's the cuddles and snuggles, but those are so few and far between, and I get denied them so often that it's really not my favorite- how could it be?!?! It would be if it was in abundance and offered, but usually I have to beg him and stick out my lip to get a hug. That's OK though; he's so boy and I love that about him.
Learning in our house is like being at a show of some sort. Every little success gets rewarded with loud cheers, clapping and celebrations. I don't know if that's the right way to get Dominic to learn, but it's working for us so we're going with it. The very first celebration we held for him was when he started learning how to stack the legos. We got him the giant ones, of course, and he loved playing with them- knocking over big stacks that we built for him. But then he started wanting to learn how to stack them himself. My boy does not have any patience. I don't mean he tries it for a little while and then gets upset when it doesn't work. I mean that if it doesn't work within about 5 seconds of him trying to do whatever it is he's trying to do, he becomes enraged and he throws whatever it is he's holding across the room and screams and kicks and goes pretty much ballistic. Shortly after getting his anger out, he chooses another item of the same game and goes through this sequence of events. Of course I intervene and help him learn, and we help him by moving his hands in the proper motions to accomplish his missions. And when he finally gets it, we all clap and cheer and wait for him to do it again. The funny thing about this isn't that we all clap and cheer for him; it's that he claps and cheers for HIMSELF! If he puts two blocks together, he looks around to see who's watching him and screams, "YAAAAAYYYY!!!" and gives himself a hearty round of applause. Before he'll put two more blocks together, he waits for the rest of us to cheer.
This pretty much goes for anything he does, really. If he feels proud of himself for anything, then he cheers and claps and waits for the rest of us to react. He's learned how to feed himself, sorta, using this method. He's not quite the expert at getting the food on the fork, but he knows how to get a loaded fork to his mouth and back to an adult for a refill.
I try to take queues from him to see what we can work on. But sometimes it's completely unnecessary. For example, I noticed he's been making the 'guh' sound and that he says "whoa" all the time. Guh plus whoa equals GO! Well, we were in the car one day and we were sitting stopped behind another car at a green light. So we said, "GO!" and Dominic piped up from the back seat with, "GO!" We laughed and laughed and he said it over and over when prompted. So I've taken this new work and have been applying it to it's meaning- so whenever we leave I ask him, "You ready to go?" And he usually responds with go, at which point I open the gate and let him climb downstairs to the front door.
I'm not the best teacher, really. To be perfectly honest, this mom stuff is still pretty foreign to me. Some things are so basic and simple and things that I probably should know to teach him, but I just don't! I get ideas from my other mom friends on Facebook and I'm like, "Oh, what a novel idea!" A friend taught her little boy how to blow kisses. HELLO! So I taught Dominic. She also associates "no" with the item she doesn't want her son to touch or mess with. DUH! So now I'm doing that. Just the little things I can't believe I've not thought of. I always had these great ideas before I became a mom, and now that I'm a mom I feel like I've gone stupid. He'll always be fed. He'll always be bathed. He'll ALWAYS be loved. But I'm thinking that he's going to be best taught by the teachers because apparently, I'm not the best at thinking in the moment. My husband tells me I should read books on how to do it, but... that just makes me feel even more dumb. Haha! I'm OK with it, though. I like to think I do teach him some things, even if it's just by screaming yay and clapping.
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