Finally getting it: picture books

So Jolly over the past week has made a major leap with picture books. His favorite right now is "Alle meine Farben" - "All my colors" - that my parents got him when he was a baby. It's got pages of things organized by color, and I like to sing the color song on the appropriate pages, so it's always been a good time because Jolly likes songs. But, he recently advanced to statistically better than random chance of pointing at the correct object when asked for one of the dozen or so things depicted on each page, so he's started having even more fun with the book.

And then, yesterday, he said "DAS?! DAS?! DAS?" repeatedly about the sock picture. He'd pulled his socks off earlier and he was barefoot. Then he got a sock from his drawer, and shouted "DAS! DAS! DAAAS!!!" happily and then after I put the sock on he continued to point at the sock in the book and then point at his foot and then point back at the book again, exclaiming the whole while. We've since had this revelation also about the shirt. Pretty funny stuff. It's like he just realized that the PICTURE of a sock is the same platonic ideal of sockiness as an actual knitwear item for the foot.

So, his receptive language skills are definitely growing in leaps and bounds right now. "Alle meine Farben" is now capable of nearly always generating correct answers, except when it gets to the page with the airplane, because he'd MUCH rather point at the airplane than at any of the other blue things depicted. More usefully, he can follow directions pretty well, and he has started being really helpful in the kitchen, stirring things (with a very stabby motion) and tossing things into bowls or pans as directed. He is also a big fan unloading the dishwasher (he brings me things and I put them away in the shelf). He can also open the dishwasher all on his own.

Also, he is now even better at climbing, and delights in getting on and off chairs. He did this over and over and over again on the ferry tonight - though the ferry chairs are taller and with less room for maneuvering, so he still needed a boost. I am SO GLAD he only got this skill when he had the smarts to understand gravity and that hurling himself off the top is only fun if someone is catching him. Good work, evolution!