Michael

I complain about this kid probably more than any of them, so I wanted to write down some things that he does that amaze me. I will do it for the other two as well, but wanted to start with him.

From about six months old, when he would sit in his high chair, I would repeatedly point to my eyes, ears, nose and mouth, stating what each part was in hopes that he would do the same. Day after day, I did this, with not an even an ounce of feigned interested from him. Then one day, he did it. Out of the blue. Months later. At about 11 months old, I started teaching him, to put up one finger (not THAT one) in response to the question "how old are you". That took considerably less time....only a few days.

Over time, he has been extremely quick to pick things up. He loves, absolutely loves, puzzles. By the time he was 2, he had moved on from wooden puzzles to the real deal. Most of the time he didn't want, but would sit quietly for long periods of time doing puzzles. And drawing "happy faces". That was his first thing that he learned to draw. And color. He loved to color and was pretty proficient at it by the time he was 3, coloring mostly inside the lines and using all of the colors. He is by most accounts a very active (hyper?) child, but put a puzzle or some paper and writing utensils in front of him, and he is quiet as a mouse, until the job is done. I have hundreds of pieces of "arting" done by him, some he has named, and some we have framed and display as artwork on our walls.

I could go on and on about this kid, like how he learned within a week, all of the states, their nicknames and capitals from an interactive puzzle he got for Christmas, how he remembers things from when he was one, the way he makes (and has always made) "sets", carefully separating cars, movie cars, animals, dinosaurs, anything out and carefully arranging them just so, in his particular order, how he just wants to know what everything says and has basically taught himself to read and has read 2 books to us, with no minimal to no help at all, his fascination with numbers.........it goes on and on. I hope that his zest for learning is not squelched when he goes to school because he gets bogged down in a class with non-English speaking students. I will just have to make sure that doesn't happen!