Glowing report

We have just returned from Champ's Health Centre check up, so please excuse me while I partake of some Mummy-bragging. The health nurse was so pleased with him. She could not believe how much he is speaking, especially for a boy and the concepts he can understand.

When we first got in she was taking to him and he was just staring at her. She asked me is he knows any words yet. I was incredulous, but hid it and just replied that he does speak quite a lot but will just take a while to warm up. Although I wanted to reply 'Does he speak any words? Well only over 100 of them.'

Soon afterwards she asked him to show her his nose, and the picture of a pig on the wall. Then she asked him to sit on the chair in the room so she could test him a little. He sat down and and saw he pencils 'Colouring' he exclaimed; unused to pencils (we use crayons) he held it the wrong way; 'Upside down' he realised his mistake; 'Broken' he pointed out that the pencil needed to be sharpened. Then he drew on the paper a little with another one and then noticed some other toys on the table.

He started playing with the beads on the wire frame 'Up, down, up, down.'; 'Orange' he pointed to the orange bead (yes, Cowboy's jump-the-gun colour teaching has finally paid off). He moved to the blocks 'Block...s' (I don't know how he figured out plurals, but often uses the plural form of words with a pause before the 's'); 'nuther one' he said as he added each block to build the tower; 'Down' they all came crashing to the table; 'Again, one more time' he loves this game; One by one up they went again 'One, two, tee, pour'.

Ok kid, now you're just showing off! None the less, cue proud parents who realise that despite the tedium, the hours of play time we have poured into this kid are absolutely priceless.

The rest of the session went pretty much the same, Champ overachieving in every area. Then, she suggested that since he is quite ahead in other areas he might be ready to toilet train quite early. Drat! I had thought that his glowing report would mean I could slack off a bit and wait for the other kiddies to catch up (ok, so maybe not really).

I confessed that he does tell me before he does a poo and he can wee on demand when we ask him to in the bath. She said that with summer coming up I should let him run around with no nappy on outside so that he sees cause and effect and gets used to predicting the sensation. Ok, so that doesn't sound too hard. I have heard from other mothers that toilet training is the single hardest thing that they have done in child rearing. Running around naked though, that is a first step that I can handle.