28 months

I can barely keep up with all the funny things Jake says on a daily basis but usually I remember to jot it down on my phone because if not, I don't remember it by the time Deric gets home.

Most nights he asks us to sing "Grace", meaning Amazing Grace. He's slowly chiming in with us as he learns more of the words and it is so sweet to hear his little voice sing with us. And every night without fail, we'll ask him if he wants to pray and he'll immediately respond with "I can say whatever I want! I do it by myself." He definitely caught on when I told him he could tell God whatever he wanted to. Go figure his prayers start with "Thank you for my trains."

Lately he's been singing songs a lot; mostly the ABCs, the "bitsy bitsy spider", Jesus loves me ( or "likes me" as he sang once) and 10 little monkeys jumping on the bed.

He heard me say "No way, Jose" and he repeated it saying "No way ho-sies!" (horses; we've yet to make him bilingual).

While trimming his toenails one morning I told him he has his daddy's toes (and everything else, he's a perfect miniature). Jake replied with his standard "Uh huh" but then stopped and said, "These are my toes, actually."

One evening after dinner we decided to run some errands so Deric said to Jake, "We're going into town." Jake looked at me, so excited, and said "I'm going to the town!"

I was reading a blog on the computer one afternoon and Jake came over, looked at the pictures (of an entirely different family), and said "Where's me?" He acts like he doesn't enjoy the limelight, but...

We were looking out of the window and watching for Deric to walk home one evening. When Jake saw Deric he exclaimed, "Wook, Daddy is coming back to me! I better open the door." (Most evenings I'm in the kitchen making dinner when Deric walks home so I give Jake the heads up. He runs to the mudroom, opens the door to the entryway and waits for Deric. Soon as he sees him he usually shouts, "Wook!" and shows him whatever train he's holding. Its too sweet.)

Deric figured out that we're more likely to get a good picture of Jake if we turn the camera around so he sees himself. It works maybe 50% of the time and its so funny to see Jake smile at himself. We're probably creating a monster, but at least we'll have cute pictures of said monster. ;)

On the mornings that I get up with Jake first (which isn't often, thank you Deric!), I usually read the chapter of Psalm and Proverbs that correlate with the day's date: chapter 1 on the first, etc. Maybe last month we read Psalm 27, which ends with a simple verse. I read it to Jake and made up motions on the spot to see if he'd remember it and after a few tries, he pretty much had it down. Now he says it without doing the motions *and* without much prompting since Deric made a big deal of asking him if he could say it by himself. Since then he's also gotten down Psalm 18:1--I love you, O Lord, my strength--and Psalm 86:11--Teach me your ways, O Lord, so I can walk in your truth. I basically just skim through the Psalms every so often to find simple verses that might make sense to him. Its good for me too, because I haven't disciplined myself to memorize verses in quite a few years. So we're both learning!


Psalm 27:14 from Ashley Skinner on Vimeo.