Nick the Zookeeper

Santa brought Nick the Little People Zoo for Christmas this past year. It is a really neat toy where you can place the animals on a platform and it will tell you what type of animal it is and what sound the animal makes. You can collect animals lost of animals to live at the zoo and Nick has about 15 animals. He plays with it all the time. The other day Jeremy and I were on the couch and Nick wanted us to play with him. Being almost 6 months pregnant I really wanted to find a game we could play where I wasn't going to have to get up and down off the floor or be crawled on by a toddler. Nick had begun to be able to retrieve his ball or car when you asked him to get it. So I decided to ask him if he could go and get his lion cub. To my surprise, Nick walked over to a pile of about 10 animals and on the first try picked up the lion cub and immediately brought it over to me. Jeremy and I clapped and made quite a fuss over him getting it correct and Nick was very pleased with himself. We thought maybe it was just a lucky guess, so we asked "Nick can you go find the hippo?" Low and behold he walked back to the pile of animals and brought the hippo, boisterous applause ensued. We continued this game and Nick went 6 for 6 on guessing the right animal, at the end when there was 2 animals left and he was unsure as to which one was correct he smartly just brought both ;) We have been playing the animal game a lot lately and he now can get all 15 right on the first try and with most make something resembling the sound the animal makes as he brings it to us! It has made us very proud of his intellect and also very aware of how much he is understanding about the world around him even if he can't fully communicate. It is time for all of us to mind our Ps&Qs so Nick doesn't pick up any bad habits :)