So, the latest change around the house is that the Monster’s doing a lot more imitating lately.

We’ve always read to him – it’s one of those things that one hears is “what you’re supposed to do” to ensure your kids get an early start on things.  And certainly, he’s got a very good head start, since he knows all his letters and numbers.

Though, lately, he’s not wanted us to read to him before bed – he’s wanted to go straight to sleep.  Instead, we’re reading to him while he’s on the toilet.  IT’s a good way to ensure that he’s not squirming and trying to get away, as well as passing the time for ourselves while we’re obviously bored and sitting on the floor.

There’s certainly times where he doesn’t want us to read to him there still.  And there’s bene more than a few times where he’s insisted on holding the book himself.  It’s during those times that he’s actually started to pretend that he’s reading (though admittedly, he knows the stories down there well enough that he still ‘reads’ almost on the right pages…)  It’s one of a few things he’s started to do lately to imitate what other people are doing – he’ll pick up the remote and sit down on the couch, pointing it at the TV and poking buttons to make the red ‘busy’ light flash on the device, or he’ll sit at the computer and type random letters…

It’s just a little bit of larger progress that we’ve seen of late.  For instance, we took him out to the playground yesterday.  We’ve been making a big deal of trying to model proper public behavior, and yesterday he was doing a good job of at least trying to say hello to more people his own age.  And he’s picking up – whether from watching how other kids do it or from how we yell at him when he doesn’t mind it – how to wait his turn for toys on the playground and the like.  He definitely doesn’t get the social niceties like personal space, but that’s something that can develop later.

I just wish I knew how to better model things so he’d imitate and show still more progress more quickly…