My nephew Max has been spending the day over here at my house. I made waffles this afternoon and as I was mixing up the batter, Max sat in his high chair reading a book. We sang for a while, scatting back and forth. Scatting with a two-year-old is hilarious. You should try it some time. Doodadee… doodadaaaa. That was just about his entire repertoire for the day. He also sang the number song for me, which was basically counting to the tune of the ABC song. He got a little befuddled sometimes when it got hard to match higher digits to the beat. That got hard for him around 50 and up.
After he was done singing he found a page in his book that was devoted to the letter W (one of those Sesame Street books, with the whole “Brought to you by the letter…” bit.) I asked him, “What starts with W?” Blank stare. “Does Wiggle start with W?” He responded with an enthusiastic, “Yeah! Wiggle! Spell it.” I spelled wiggle a few times, then he spelled it back to me. We then moved on to Waffle, Wheel, and other great W words. It was great fun. I’d write them down, he’d trace over the letters a few times, then off he went, spelling them on his own. It’s downright creepy just how smart he is. It makes me wonder what’s going on in his head that he just can’t say yet because he has a hard time talking at times.
The questions he spits out are great too. He was drawing a picture of his Dad, and he looked up at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Where’d Daddy’s beard go?” I shrugged back and said, “I don’t know!” He replied with a laugh, and looked up at me with that look that clearly says, ‘You silly person’. “He shaved it off!”
And earlier today, when I came downstairs after waking up, he was sitting in his high chair, eating breakfast. Only, he wasn’t really eating, he told me he was making a “pretzel garden” by shoving his pretzel sticks into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They stood up rather well, then he garnished his garden with a few raisin-rocks. He didn’t eat very much, but he had fun.
He’s so dang cute. But, it’s going to be aggravating – when I have kids, or when my other brothers have kids, how will they ever measure up to Max’s brilliance? Or, what’d be really scary would be if we all had really brilliant children and they ended up playing chess with each other at age 4, reading and analysing Tolstoy and Machiavelli when they’re 6, and then they all decide they’re tired of adult domination and they take over the world at age 8. Go kids, go!