A Little Mimic

Adam is the perfect little mimic lately. He watches everything we do and will mimic the things we try to teach him. Such as:

1. The "Indian" 

You know, where you make the "ahhhh..." sound and bounce your hand against your mouth. He can do it himself (hand and all), he will do it if you put your hand on his mouth, and he will take turns doing it to himself and then trying to help me do it while I say "ahhhhh...." (and sometimes gets a little too excited and smacks me a little too hard... so we go back to each being in charge of our own "Indian" noises).

2. Blowing kisses. 
This, to Adam, is the same basic thing as the "Indian" except that he puts his hand on his mouth longer. He forgets to throw or blow the kiss away from him, but he tries.

3. The Fake Sneeze.
I guess I didn't realize how much I sneeze (allergies). One day Shannon told me that he thinks that sometimes Adam is saying "yes," but sometimes he's pretending to sneeze. Apparently this was a big hit at my parent's house on Sunday too. Then last night he was acting like he might want a bite of my broccoli, and he toddled up to me (broccoli is something he will eat but is not on the list of "favorites" for him, so sometimes it doesn't pass the highchair test -- and usually he deems it "Caley-food").

He opened his mouth really wide and came in for the fork, and at the last minute, turned his head, threw it back, and "sneezed" with a little whispered "choo!" I laughed.

When I laugh, Adam always looks at me with a big smile and searches my eyes to see if what he did was funny, and then he does it again. He loves to make me laugh, and he's good at it.

After I laughed at his "allergic to broccoli" routine, we played that game for about 5 more minutes as he perfected his sneeze. His grin is so big when he "sneezes" and he throws his head forward so perfectly - if his "a-choo" wasn't such a cute, tiny little whisper, the motion could be mistaken for a real sneeze.

Last week I was feeding Adam with a toddler spoon and he was content to let me work the fork for him. Robin came over so we could go out. When she sat down at the table, Adam grinned his flirty little grin at her, and I brought the fork to his mouth. He stopped me, deftly swept the fork out of my hand, and fed himself as if he did it every day of his life. I didn't realize the desire to show off happened at such an early age -- although with Adam he's been showing off for an audience since he was 4 months old.

This morning I dropped Adam off at daycare and let him down on the rug. All of the other kids were getting some cereal so the teacher was a little busy. He walked up to me and gave me a hug around the legs, I told him good bye and that I loved him, and when I walked to the door he watched me go instead of crying and following. I waved. He waved back and smiled at me. Then he turned to find something to do. How did I end up with such a perfect little guy?