Talking up a storm

Kiefer's vocabulary is exploding! He can say his friends names: Auggie (August), Cedar, Nate, Jackie (Jackson), Yuuki, Maggie. For the past week or so, whenever we get in the car, he says, "Auggie's house!" He's hoping we're going to visit August's house. He lives on a farm with tractors, chickens, and a dog. Very cool for a little boy. When Cedar and her parents went away for a few days, we watched their 3 week old chickens. Kiefer said, "bawk, bawk, bawk" whenever he saw the chickens. When he helped me feed them, he said, "eat!"

Today we went to the doctor for his 2-year well visit. I didn't tell him since he freaked out at the doctor's the past couple of times. I was driving toward UMass and as soon as it was in sight, he immediately said, "doctor." I was amazed! He associates UMass with the doctor! Well, before we went to the doctor, I dropped by my office so my colleagues could see Kiefer. He played shy at first, but eventually warmed up. He made good friends with Kate, who gave him an "I Spy" book to read. He also went up and down the long hallways and decided we needed to go down four flights of stairs, too. When we got downstairs, we saw Craig, the professor who taught Statistics II when I took it in Spring 2007. I was in the last months of my pregnancy back then and Kiefer spent almost every class kicking me, so I would say to Craig, "I think the baby is going to be a statistician." When we saw him today, I told him he should talk statistics to Kiefer. He said, "Central Limit Theory," which made Kiefer laugh. It was pretty funny.

Kiefer was fine when we got to the doctor's office. He was quite happy to sit at the little table and read in the waiting room. The freak out didn't happen until we were called in to nurse's room for Kiefer to be weighed and get some vitals taken. Screaming and crying with no tears. We then went back to the waiting room and he was just fine. He was also OK when we went into Dr. Schmitt's office. That is, until she needed to listen to his chest and back and look at his ears and throat. You would have thought by listening to his screams that she was murdering him. He also needed two shots today. That prompted the best screams. Luckily, it was over quickly. On his way out he cheerfully said to the Dr. and the nurse, "Bye bye!"

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been practicing counting 1 to 10 with Kiefer. At first he would only say 2 and 9. This morning, he actually did all of the numbers! I was so excited! I really can't work on the alphabet with him because he hates the alphabet song. If I start singing it, he shakes his head and says, "No. No. No!" I guess we won't be learning the alphabet through song!

Last weekend, our friends from the Netherlands, stopped by for a couple of days during a 2 week RV vacation through New England. It was fun to see Jeroen, Chantal and their adorable 9 month old daughter, Yasmijn. We mostly hung out at home and took it easy, but we did manage to get to Shelburne Falls for a lovely morning. Chantal got some excellent footage of Kiefer and Yasmijn having a conversation over dinner. Yasmijn likes to say, "Ya ya ya ya." Kiefer would echo it back. He also shared his cars with Yasmijn and she seemed to enjoy playing with them. It was very sweet.