Counting

*For the records, this all happened BEFORE Valentine's day.

For Valentine's Day William and I have been working on some decorations. We made the hearts on the window from an idea we got from here (tweaked a little to my liking). William loved making these hearts and he did an awesome job! Since we used contact paper we didn't need glue of any kind, so William could just stick on the tissue paper- and it would stay stuck! I also like it because they are durable, which turned out to be important.

Where I nanny we have some snowflakes we made up on the window. Nearly every morning at breakfast we count them. William, from his high chair will not really join in verbally, but he has his pointer finger up and is doing the same motion as we are.

I had these hearts that we made high up on our window, but recently he has wanted to "count" them. I got tired of holding him up, so I decided a good solution was to move the hearts down. He loves to count them. In the mornings he will run over to them and "count" them. Counting usually consists of me counting aloud while he points at hearts, sometimes the same one, for each number- not exactly one-to-one correspondence, but we're getting there. Recently, he will sometimes verbally count as well- all the numbers just happen to be "twoooo" :) I love to tell him to go count his hearts, and he will run over to them and count them.

Then we made some Valentine's for Grandparents with his handprints and turned them into hearts. We got that idea from this blog. When I finished cutting them out he looked at them a moment . . . .

Then he ran over to the window to put them with the rest of his hearts. I thought it was so cute the way he recognized that they were the same shape. So of course I added some tape so it would stay on the window with the rest of his hearts.

He was pretty pleased with the result, even if Mom didn't get his whole face on the camera. He loves to move and rearrange them around the window. Thus, the importance of the durability factor. I'll have to figure out something we can put up for March. These are too much fun for the both of us right now. I can't get enough of his "counting".

And for your- and mine, but especially Grandma's- viewing pleasure, some videos of William "counting".

One more thing with counting, while playing hide and go seek with Dominic and Amelia at work, it was my turn to count. I started counting aloud and William came running over with his pointer finger swinging through the air, looking for something to count. He stopped and looked at me a little confused as I kept counting, but I wasn't touching or counting anything. It was too cute.

Could this sweet boy have captured my heart any more than he has??!!