I'll regret it if I don't write these developments down
although it's hard to keep track of them since they come on gradually and then suddenly you believe they've always been that way.
Felix continues to test the limitations of his body; he will climb onto anything, he enjoys standing on one leg whenever he can hold on to someone/something, and on any reasonably soft surface, he'll put his head on the ground (fortunately, he isn't yet trying to lift his feet! ;)) and sway back and forth. Quite stressful for his poor mother if he insists on doing that on the couch near the edge. Yes, I know, you have to leave kids to explore, but OMG THE THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN. *flail*
He has at last discovered that swings and slides are great fun - practically from one day to the other, he went from "NO I DO NOT WANT TO GO NEAR THE SWINGSET" to "THE OTHER KID IS NOT ALLOWED TO USE THE SWINGSET BECAUSE I WANT TO".
He is experimenting with conditional/temporal clauses (Wenn die Ampel gün wird, dann dürfen wir fahen!, "When the traffic light goes geen, we can go!"). He's been quoting bits from nursery rhymes for a while, but now he quotes them in their entirety. He tries to sing the songs he frequently hears, although melody and rhythm are not yet his forte. He knows the lyrics though. Mommy is now allowed to put on CDs instead of having to sing herself all the time; we started out with typical kiddy song CDs, and when I got tired of those, I experimented with "normal" music. He accepts it unless there are too many instrumental parts (it's got to be singing!) or unless the singing is too complex (he doesn't like Queen, for instance :(). He likes it best when the lyrics are in German, but he'll also accept ABBA, Blackmore's Night and occasionally Enya. Most of the German-language music I've got on my computer isn't all that kid-friendly because it tends to be from the pseudo-medieval corner (containing either blood, guts and gore, or naughty bits, or creepy stuff, or the joys of drinking lots of wine) or because it goes right over his head.
He sounds slightly Hessian at the moment because he still can't pronounce the "R"-sound, and when he doesn't replace it with an "H" instead, he'll use an [e], like in Hessian dialect. Der Felix ist hiä!)
He loves numbers. So far, he has been leaving out 3 (in German, and particularly the way Felix pronounces it, 2 and 3 sound pretty much the same) whenever he counts, although he insists on having three pieces of bread or three nuts or whatever on his place and he knows when it's three and when it's only two. But for some reason, he has always counted ein, tsei, vier, fümf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, tehn, eöf, töuf ("1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12" in infant pronunciation). He can count up to twelve because he loves clocks. He'll generally count up to twelve no matter how many things there actually are, although he'll sometimes stop at four or eight, too. He'll generally add Ui, so viele! Hast du die alle gezählt! ("Oh, so many! Did you count them all!"). Anyway, yesterday he included the number 3! And he knew that he hadn't previously done that, because he yelled it out all triumphantly. Ein, tsei, DEI!, vier...
He observes when there is Schrift ("script", letters) on something and notices the difference between random patterns and actual letters (or numerals). He cannot actually read them yet, only noting stuff like Da ist goße baue Schift! Auf dem weißen Auto! ("There are big blue letters! On the white car!"). - Oh that's right, he loves colours too. - but since he is already expressing an interest in them, I fear it's not going to take long until he starts puzzling that out. There go the beautiful illiterate brain structures...
(As a side note, a few days ago our tenants' most annoying son, Josua, came running up to Jörg. "Mr. S., guess what! I can count! To five! One, two, three, four, five!" He's four years old, or maybe he recently turned five, I'm not sure. Jörg felt like Scar in The Lion King. "Oh, goody.")
His current obsession is trains. Trains, trains, trains. He's got various different toy trains (my father is a huge train fan). The one that's got proper tracks is the best, because he can dismantle the tracks and put them back together (Muss Felix das hepahieän, "Felix has got to hepare that!") and make endless trains with the many, many magnetic trains and carriages he has inherited from me, my brother and my cousins. But he'll also push the track-less trains (of different sizes and materials) around with great enthusiasm. When he is no longer hungry, he'll line up everything in reach - bottles, salt shaker, cups, plates - and push it across the table, saying Das ist aber ein langer Zug! Mit Anhänger! ("My, this is a long train! With coach!"). The other obsession is building high towers from building bricks, and then throwing them over if they don't collapse on their own at some point, saying Huch! Erdbeben! ("Oops! Earthquake!") or Das war zu viel! ("That was too much!") or simply Umgestürzt! ("Toppled over!").
Oh, and he can open doors now. And naturally, he insists on opening any door that he needs to go through personally, including the car door from inside. Same goes for turning on the light (or turning it off), which requires lifting him up so he can reach the switch, and flushing the toilet (which he doesn't use yet). Das ist Felix' Aufgabe ("That's Felix' job"), he always says!
(And sliding doors are called "railway doors". Because they're sliding on rails!)