ABCs and a call to Uncle Mike

Last weekend Nicholas and I spent one morning (seriously an entire hour and a half) playing at our local library. Yes, playing. We really don't need to bother with children's museums with the librayr system in our county. Nicholas' favorite part of the library is the mini play structure with slide, but since I let him stay longer than usual he also explored a lot of the other options. There were bins with all sorts of fun objects, which he mostly enjoyed taking out one by one, naming each, carefully walking them over to the other side of the room and lining them up, and then just as carefully and methodically bringing them back to put away.

And then there is the puppet show stage. He hadn't show much interest in this until a couple visits ago when there was a mom doing a puppet show with her kids that caught his attention. So this weekend he initiated it, walking over and picking up some puppets. I forget the exact order of how things unfolded, but it started with him ordering me to have the puppets sing (that is what the other mom had done) and somehow ended up with him singing the ABCs . . . BY HIMSELF!!! Last time we had sung them (admittedly months and months ago) I had been impressed that he could fill in letters when I paused, but I had no idea he could do the whole song on his own.

I didn't have the camera there at the time, but resolved to tape this feat soon. Well, last night as I was trying to finish my dinner he started singing the ABCs. Luckily the camera was on the table so I grabbed it. However, by the time it started taping, as you'll hear, he was already halfway done. So I asked him to do it again. And he started again, but got distracted a couple different times. So you can't hear it all the way through, but you get it all in pieces. He actually has recently added a few other songs ("Baa baa black sheep" is the one he surprised us with the other day), so I'll try to get those sometime as well.

From 2011 April

A few minutes after the ABCs he was sitting on my lap as I finished dinner and grabbed "his" cellphone and started pretending to have a conversation with his Uncle Mike. And it was so precise that I couldn't help laughing. So on went the camera again:

From 2011 April

Sorry to all his other relatives, but every single time Nicholas pretends to call someone this week it is Uncle Mike. And when he asks "How you doing?" Joe and I invariably burst out laughing.