Baby School, Library Story Time, and Other Big Things

Arthur is almost 18 months old and he's tearing it up!

In September he began attending "baby school," as I call it, a Parent Education class that meets every Wednesday morning from 9-11:30am at Burbank Adult School, conveniently located directly across the street from our house.  (Beatrice did a near-identical program through Pasadena City College when she was Arthur's age.)

The class is run like a preschool but parents remain with their babies for most of the time.  For 45 minutes, however, we leave our babies to attend a parents-only discussion while the children get used to the idea of being left with other caretakers.  This is good for Arthur, who is more clingy than Beatrice was.

Snack time

 Participating in a class walkathon

Arthur's favorite area at school is the reading corner.

Arthur loves the toys, the snacks, and the other babies.  But most of all, he loves the bubbles.  "Bubbles, now!" he cries upon arriving at school.

On Friday mornings, Dev and Arthur go to story time at the Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Public Library.  The story time there is really a multimedia extravaganza featuring books, songs, puppets, a felt board, short films, musical instruments, and crafts.  But again, Arthur is really in it for the bubbles.  From the moment he enters the story time room he zeroes in on the bubble machine in the corner and starts requesting bubbles - in fact, any time he's in any part of any library, he immediately demands bubbles.

 

Meanwhile, as Arthur approaches a year and a half, he is exploding with new interests and accomplishments, from building to coloring to doing ballet. 

That last one started when Beatrice was demonstrating her ballet moves to Suzan and Naresh.  Not to be outdone, Arthur jumped up, stuck out one leg behind him, and said, "Ta da!"

Ta da!

Of course everyone laughed and clapped so now he does it all the time - he is such a ham.  (This also shows you what poor Beatrice has to put up with - constantly upstaged.)

Arthur's favorite food is meatballs.

 

The most exciting thing around here, though, is his absolute explosion of language. For the last few weeks, he seems to learn a new word every day - recent new entries include "meatballs," "juice box," "graham cracker,""hot dog," and "Cromwell."  He also calls all cars, trucks, and trains "go," as a noun. And we've even gotten a few sentences out of him, things like, "I want to walk," "Can I swing, Paul?" " I jumping," and "No milk, I want juice."

Having a pretend telephone conversation

He can't say his own name yet but recently when a woman asked him, "What's your name?" he replied, "Hi, I a baby."

He can also perform increasingly complex tasks; I keep him occupied with requests like, "Go get a leaf and put it in a cup and bring it to mommy."  He also tells me now when he has dirtied his diaper, a first step on the long road to toilet training.

Arthur is more attached than ever to his stuffed rabbit, whom he named Boo.  He drags Boo around everywhere and it's always incredibly filthy no matter how much I wash it, but after all the heartbreak of taking away Beatrice's pacifier (which she still asks for occasionally, more than six months later) I told Dev that Arthur can keep Boo until he's 30 for all I care. 

 

 

Arthur will be 18 months old in a few days and it's becoming clearer every day that he really is a toddler and not a baby (even if he introduces himself as one).  It makes me sad to see how fast he's grown, but it's exciting to see who he's turning out to be.