That's Clever

(Jack calls the mask from Lori his "owl helmet." LOL) As the days of summer move onward, I can really tell that Jack is moving towards being a "preschooler" and not being a "toddler" very much anymore. His language, his comprehension, his skills are all becoming much more sophisticated and he is gaining independence by leaps and bounds. When he was tiny he went through periods where it felt hard to capture all of the changes, and we are definitely in one of those spurts again. A few highlights from this week include this daily occurrence outside his bedroom door:
At first I couldn't figure out what was going on. He asks to take these trucks to bed with him. He plays with them for a little while, then opens his bedroom door, sets them outside of it, goes back into his room and goes to sleep. It occurred to me the other day that when he is having trouble sleeping I will often go in there and take whatever he is playing with away. The trucks outside the door? He is taking away his own toys so he can go to sleep. Clever, eh?

Other moments:
When he saw me making the lampshade he came running over and said, "Hi Mama! That's clever!"

I switched his "Dandy" (the security blanket) for a clean one the other day. When he went into his room to find Dandy he came out into the hallway and said to me, "This is a clean Dandy! It smells clean."

Sometimes when he is being very bossy I will call him "your highness." While I was changing his diaper the other day I asked him to do something and he replied, "Yes your highness."

He will occasionally answer "okay" when told no.

We fixed up the playroom again this past month (we hadn't been down there very much since spring came). He went downstairs to play the other day and he said to me on the way down, "Mama, I am gonna go downstairs. If I need you I will say come downstairs mama!"

And a few other things of note. He is reliably counting to 10, he has made the switch (finally!) to the toddler bed for good, he returns to his one day a week school this week (he isn't very excited about this), he has started spontaneously singing (Rascal Flatt's Life is a Highway) and he has a memory like a steel trap. I am pretty sure he could memorize the entire Constitution if we set our minds to it!