Hyrum's other December adventures - a Joy post

Meal time has really progressed into something fun which I had never supposed possible. Hyrum will go to take a bite and then wrinckle up his face and say “oooooooo” . I will then laugh, he will give me an adoring grin and laugh too. What comes next is just as funny. He will purposely try to get me to laugh again, but his laugh becomes more fake the more times he tries it. But, although fake sounding it still produces his desired affect, because I will laugh even harder at the fake laugh than I did at the real one.

Fun new words for Hyrum are ‘clean’ when he wants his hands clean, and Fanm for Farm (old McDonald) He loves that song. Additionally Hyrum now says song as a way to request music, which is great, because music is his most requested item, besides Buzz Lightyear or Bob Builder.

So speaking of Buzz, a new game that Hyrum has replicated a few times is to put a toy on dad’s office chair (stand it up or put it in a specific place) and spin the chair. The game started by Hyrum being in the chair and mom spinning him, then he progress to spinning balls and now the special subject is Buzz. Buzz have only one rule the he is supposed to follow. Hyrum wants him to remain standing. As you can imagine, this is a little difficult for Buzz, but they are sometime successful in playing it according to the rules.

Yesterday Hyrum took apart his spiral ball toy. We didn’t stop him, but I didn’t rush to fix it for him. Infact I didn’t rush so much that Derrill got to putting it together before I did. It's the toy Derrill mentioned in the other post about frogs.

So now that the holidays are finally over it has been time for me to sanitize the house again. This means putting all of his toys in plastic bags or something so that he has to interact with me to get to them. It encourages social and language interactions and make me look like a big ‘chocolate chip cookie’ as the behavioralist that was over a couple conferences that I went to explains. Every time we spend time together we have fun and it has really improved our relationship. If he has free access to all of his toys he just plays and ignores me a lot. This technique has really stoked up his language quickly.

Hyrum has become a very persistent counter. He sits in his crib during nap time and practices saying ‘OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOne-ah, Twoooooo’ and he uses all his little energy in each word and spits with the Two. He is also quite fond of 9 and 10. When we finish time out we always count out the last 10 seconds and about 7 or 8 (or during the whole thing) Hyrum with say, ‘ni, ni, ten!’ by the time he say said he is in a pretty good mood no matter how bad timeout was. What I find fascinating is that he has already generalized counting into conducting. Because when he conducts the Halleluiah chorus, he says ‘1, 2….. 1, 2’ but when he points each object gets both a 1 and a 2 in quick succession.

Another fun number thing with Hyrum is while eating. He will tell us his word for each food that he likes to eat as his request. The beginning of December Derrill started a new game with Hyrum that he loves. After Hyrum lets us know what kind of food he wants to eat, then we ask him how many. He usually responds with ‘TWO!’ and we give him 2 spoonfuls. Sometimes he will just say the number and not type of food, but we wheedle it out of him.

Two new favorites for Hyrum of books are Hands are Not for Hitting and Germs are not for Sharing. There is book that we read with Hyrum that he almost always giggles when we read it. It is ‘Red Hat, Blue Hat’ and because of the book he has started to say Ooops all by himself. It is a riot, as you can see in the video.

And news flash, Hyrum will finally wear a hat, on occasion. Some of the necessary requirements are that it is HIS idea and that the hat go on and off when he wants it to. He is pretty proud of himself for putting it on. He is mostly interested in hats that dad has been wearing recently.

Playing with blue play doh has also become a must, infact at the beginning of a meal yesterday he was so determined to play with it he told us he was all done eating after only a couple of bites. We told him he could be all done, but he was going to a nap and not playing with playdoh, he finally was willing to eat his lunch, but it took a while to convince him we were firm on that decision.

Snow time is fun too. Hyrum calls it Sonow. I go out to shovel and he goes out to tromp, fall, and get hit with the snow that I shovel over his head. It is all in fun. It really started out as a technique to keep him close to me and out of the road and has turned into a game. I get a large shovel full of snow and say ‘up…. And over’ as I pick it up and thrown it on to the nearest pile. Well, Hyrum started trying to get close to me as I was doing this so I would throw it over his head, which he get the biggest kick out of . But he likes it even more is a little snow falls him on the way over. He also helped me sweep some snow off of the car.

He is a fascinating kid in every way.