To my utter amazement, Jonathan knows his left from his right, not just occasionally but consistently.
He can put on his own sandals, which have Velcro fasteners, though if he undoes the toe strap as well as the ankle strap when he takes them off, he usually needs help redoing the lower one, which is quite tight, especially if he puts his foot too far forward.
When he is either not in a mood to ask for help, or else doesn't see someone to ask, he can be very patient and persistent. As he was working hard to put on his shoes one day, I overheard him encouraging himself with, "I'm getting there, I'm getting there!"
Heather has a gingerbread house cake mold that belonged to my mother, and putting it together is a non-trivial exercise. The other day Jonathan spent about 20 minutes working with it, until he succeeded.
I once read that a study conducted at a preschool revealed a high percentage of the girls' utterances to be recognizable as language, whereas what came out of the boys' mouths was mostly sound effects. Jonathan is a clear exception to that trend. He is verbal to the point of being a chatterbox. Like his Aunt Janet, he embellishes his play with long and detailed narration.
That said, the past couple of days have brought an annoying trend: Suddenly his precociously clear and logical speech has been replaced by deliberate baby talk: words shortened and/or made "cute," vowel sounds altered, pitch raised to a near whine. I know it's normal, especially with a new baby coming. I remember Janet going through that stage, and once when I enjoined her to "talk like a real person," she responded indignantly, "I NOT a real person, I a BABY!" But I do wonder where it came from, as he was never spoken to in baby talk himself.
