Eric used "Name?" yesterday for the first time (that I know of), to ask for someone's name. For instance, he pointed to John and said "Name? Name, mommy?" He had to repeat it a couple times before I clued in, but I thought it was neat that he had figured out how to ask for someone's name.

Today he pointed out "two birdie. two birdie sleeping?" on the way to church. As far as we know, this is the first time he's used a number (greater than one) without first counting them, just spontaneously using it as an attribute.

He has begun to startle at unexpected noises such as our fire alarm that went off briefly (3 beeps) from a little smoke from our dirty oven, or the fan/heater turning on in the toddler room before other kids arrived. The fire alarm rather freaked him out; the heater just made him jump and lean on me instead of his normal response which used to be "fan? fan, mommy?".

He dealt really well with the (de)construction yesterday, napping 1.5 hours (normal is 2.5) through us banging and sawing. Using a broom and dustpan, he helped clean up the smaller debris, dumping whatever bits he could get onto his dustpan into the trashcan(s) we brought in from outside. "Me dump! Me dump!" was a common refrain in the morning, emphasizing his desire to help and be involved. I declared it was good practice because by 3 he was going to be sweeping my floors. Of course, he has no real concept of how to press the front of a dustpan into the floor, or even how to direct a broom quite yet, so he may be doing hard labor by 4 instead of 3, but it's still good practice.