This Into That

While not desperately trying to get someone to read him a book about trucks, or looking out the window at trucks, Seamus spends a lot of his time putting things into other things.  He has a yellow wooden schoolbus with six differently-shaped blocks that fit into it, and he is starting to master getting the circle-shaped block into the circle-shaped hole, the triangle-shaped block into the triangle-shaped hole, etc.  He likes to stack up his stackable cups in the bathtub, and sometimes he likes to change it up and stick a rubber ducky into one of the cups.  He likes to load things up into the driver's seat of his toy dump truck, too, and he's getting more consistent at getting the alphabet pieces to fit correctly into his singing ABC's fridge magnet.  Or, sometimes he gets the magnets, blocks, and cups to fit correctly into the laundry hamper.

Or sometimes he finds new places to put the things that someone else has put in the laundry hamper -- this morning, for example, I was in the bathroom washing my face while he fished two dirty socks out of my laundry hamper and threw them into the bathtub.

And, as skinny as he is, he eats a ton and he LOVES to put food into his mouth.

I don't know if you can really tell, but this picture was meant to show you that he mostly puts food into his mouth with his left hand, with his right hand sort of dangling in the air nearby, until it swoops down on the tray at the end of the meal to help the left hand smoosh the food around. While he definitely uses both his hands to play and work with the blocks and magnets and do other things that use his fine motor skills, he seems to favor his left hand right now.  [I wonder if that means he is left-handed?  When does "handedness" (is that a word?) develop?]

The "putting things into other things" came in handy at our friends Cassie and Andy's housewarming party last weekend -- Shay spent a good 15 minutes taking beers out of six packs and stocking them in the ice bucket. (And then taking them out of the ice bucket and putting them in the six packs.  And then putting them back into the ice bucket.)

It has come in less handy as he has discovered how to put things into the top opening of the diaper bin and swing the handle down to deposit the thing into the smelly, gross depths of the bin -- we've lost a stuffed koala and a stuffed bear so far.

I, meanwhile, nearly poured coffee from the coffeepot into my oatmeal this morning, instead of pouring the water from the kettle.  And when I finished eating a yogurt while working on a lesson plan, I absentmindedly stuck the licked-clean spoon into the pen pocket of my schoolbag. What things are going into unexpected places in your house these days?