Moses - 13 months

In the past month or so, Moses has developed a great interest in animals. Last week he impressed me when he heard a dog barking somewhere outside, pointed towards where the sound was coming from, and said "dog!" Today while we were at the park, he saw a woman walking her two dogs. He pointed at them and said, "dog! dog! woo-woo!" (by "woo" he of course means "woof") Whenever he sees a cat he points at it and exclaims "dat!" (he can't quite say words that begin with "c"). He also gets very excited whenever he sees a squirrel, which he also calls a "dat".

Moses seems to understand a lot of things for his age. For example, he understands the meaning of "hot". He often touches the space heater in our bedroom and says, "Hot!" The other day he touched some of my food at dinner and said, "Hot!" He also impressed us a couple weeks ago when he put the cap on a milk carton the correct way. He knew without even having to experience trial and error that he needed to turn the cap over to fit it correctly over the spout. He did the same thing with the cap that goes on my bottle of moisturizer. I know these things all sound mundane and inconsequential, but I'm just recording them here for posterity, so please bear with me.

Moses is a very good eater. For breakfast he can eat nearly an entire fried egg all by himself. The other evening I was dropping the boys off at Mimi and Papa's house so I could help Joe get some work done on our new house. Joshua was feeling tired and didn't want me to leave, so Mimi tried to distract him by offering him some veggie chips. As soon as Moses heard her say "chips" he perked up and pointed across the living room at the pantry doors and began to get excited. "Chih! Chih!" he happily exclaimed. He knew exactly where Mimi keeps those chips hidden. Thankfully, Moses' taste for chips is tempered by his love of vegetables. As noted before, he likes asparagus and will feed himself several stalks of asparagus in one sitting. More recently we've discovered that he really enjoys steamed broccoli. The other day at dinner he fed himself several large florets. What a contrast to his picky older brothers, who even to this day will protest most vegetables. I've often agonized over the theory that children's preferences for certains foods are not innate, but rather a product of their environments--meaning that if your kid refuses to eat vegetables, it must be your fault for letting him eat junk food all the time. But now that I have a child who was introduced to junk food at the same time he was introduced to vegetables, but has already voluntarily eaten more asparagus and broccoli in 13 months than than his junk-food-deprived older brothers have in 4 years, I have tossed that theory out the window once and for all.