Mr. Independent

Brendan's always been lazy, you know why undress yourself if Mommy can do it for you, etc. But in the last few weeks, he's doing everything for himself. He's dressing and undressing himself. He gave up the kid's cutlery and is using adult silverware. Except when he's drinking in the living room on the carpet, he's only drinking out of a regular cup. He's totally independent in using the toilet except for still needing help with the flush. He's washing himself in bath, he even started washing his hair this week. He cleans his own ears. He's been brushing his teeth for awhile, but even cleans the toothbrush now afterwards. He uses the remote correctly to change the channels to the shows he wants to watch, uses the DVD player. He gets what he wants out of the fridge, opens containers. He amazed me the other day by getting a spoon and then going in the frifge and and getting his Dora yogurt., opening it, eating it and then throwing it out and the spoon in the sink all without coming to me. I keep wondering who this kid is, lol.

And today he was using the computer correctly. I've been using laptops for years, but I still have my old desktop. Brendan loves to type on Wordpad on my laptop but I don't like him using the laptop so I set him up on the desktop last week. Every day he's wanted to type on it. When the babysitter was here on Sunday she changed the font colors for him and he's wanted me to do it too. It was driving me crazy because he'd type for about 10 seconds and then want the color changed. I showed him how to do it using the trackball and he did it!!! He was actually able to manipulate the trackball to get the pointer on the font button and then choose the color he wanted and click it. He did every color. He also was able to manipulate it get on the X to click it closed. I was just so amazed because fine motor skills have never been his strong suit.



And sometimes he really does surprise with me the things he catches onto. He was ripping paper I was putting out for recycling. For the hell of it I gave him a sheet of paper and asked him to rip it in two. He did and I explained that each piece was one half of the whole. I did an explanation of how each smaller piece was one half and that two halves made a whole. I also talked about breaking a cookie in two and having two halves, cutting a sandwich into two, etc. And he totally got it. He ripped another piece of paper and held up one piece and said "one half" and then both and said "two halves". I asked him what two halves equal and he said "one whole". I would love to hear Brendan and his cousin have a math chat. Kyle is obsessed with math. He loves for my brother and SIL to ask him adding and subtracting questions. Recently my brother asked him what 5 - 8 was and without missing a beat Kyle said negative 3. Did I mention Kyle turned 4 in September? Clearly someone must have explained the concept to him, but eeek!!!! These boys scare me sometimes.