Christopher's Many Talents

Christopher is amazing. I think I've said this before, but he never seizes to amaze me. His vocabulary is growing, and for archiving purposes I'll list all of his words: Da-da, Momma, ball, door (most recent), dog, hot, fire, fan, light, tick-tock, good, gogurt (yogurt), fish, deer, geese (are you shocked, he is Ryan's son). Most of these words are the beginning consonant sound, but each day I've noticed him morphing the sound to be more accurate. I think there are more words, but I can't recall right now. He also has a large array of sounds that mean something to him, or are just fun to make. He makes a zerbert sound (blows through perced lips) for potty, with which he is pretty accurate. This sound is made when he walks into the bathroom, when he goes potty in his diaper, when he's about to go potty, or if he gets a hold of a fresh diaper from the changing table. I wonder how I can use his awareness to aid with potty training, but I don't know where to begin, or if its way too early. So instead, I bought him a potty chair to play with and just talk about it. He is so receptive. For instance, this morning he found his shirt from yesterday laying on the floor. He picked it up started walking around with it. I said "Christopher, that goes in your room". Once in his room I continued, "That's dirty, it goes in the hamper". The little stinker walks over to his open hamper and drops in the shirt. I've never talked about the hamper before, maybe he remembers seeing me put clothes in, and he listens to my tone and figures out what I want him to do. He has also done this with Ryan's shoes: he picks them up in the living room and walks them into our bedroom and puts them away with my instruction. If we keep this up, we will have one tidy house. At least these tasks counteract all the un-tidying he is apt to do. Last weekend Ryan told Christopher to close the door and he immediately followed instruction. A fun game we like to play is "Where is ______?" (fill in the blank). Christopher will walk around and find whatever it is, pick it up, and walk around hugging it with a great smile on his face. He also has a interactive DVD game, geared towards babies and toddlers. There is a small controller that sits on the floor and has three buttons on it. During the video there are pauses and a voice instructs "Hit the button to count more nuts". At this instruction, Christopher will very purposefully hit one of the buttons to continue the video. The first time I played this was about 2 weeks ago, I didn't expect Christopher to show any interest. I thought I would at least have to show him the process a few times. Well, he never gave me a chance because he hit the button upon the video's request before I could show him. I was SHOCKED! It was then that I realize there is little he doesn't understand. I am afraid if I don't start writing these details down, I will soon forget them!