Xander at Play

It's hard to believe that its almost been a year since my last post.  I've written lots of drafts but not published anything.  Today Xander and I were playing with blocks.  Xander loves to knock over the blocks and then attempt to stack them himself.  He gets to about four high before his towers fall over.  Today I watched him stack the blocks and start to get frustrated with them falling over.  He concentrated really hard and stacked them slower so that they would stay standing.  He smiled at my positive reinforcement as his experiment was a success.  Then he smiled even wider when he knocked over the tower himself.

Today was also the first time that Xander didn't automatically destroy a block structure that I built.  Instead of knocking it over he started to help me build it by stacking his own blocks onto the mini castle.  Then he further redecorated by switching around a lot of the blocks that I had already put down.  Once he felt it was ready, he demolished it.

Building with blocks according to our doctor is an 18 month old activity.

Xander also did something very extraordinary today.  He likes to help you clap your hands and show people how to do it.  I held out my hands for him as some of his favorite music was playing.  He moved them together rapidly, but then shook his head.  He moved them together slowly to make the clapping sound and then shook his head again.  He concentrated and then moved my hands together with the beat of the music and he smiled really big.  I couldn't believe it.  Our little man is showing us just how smart he can be I guess.