James is a big fan of animals of all kinds, and we play with his little Fisher-Price animal set for several hours every day. Here we see one of his favorite activities: Mommy or Daddy will name an animal, and James will go find it. James is very good at this now; he can tell the difference between the quail and the nightingale better than Daddy can.
Sorry that the sound is so bad on this one; don't know what the problem is.
James has also figured out that his toys are representations of actual animals. He has a young person's encyclopedia with lots of pictures of real animals, and he likes to pick out a toy animal and then find the picture of the same real animal in the book. He's a little annoyed that his encyclopedia doesn't have a picture of a vulture, though. We had to get the 'V' volume of the grown-up encyclopedia and let him see the vulture's picture in there. Along the same lines, he now knows that the little plastic giraffe seen above is the same animal as his big stuffed giraffe, and they are both the same as the giraffe in his puzzle. When he sees the giraffe picture in his encyclopedia, he brings Mommy or Daddy all the various giraffe-related toys. Same for the penguin, the iguana, and the cat (although he usually tries to grab the real-live cat, which doesn't always go too well).
This understanding of symbolism extends to things other than animals, too. He was wearing a shirt with an airplane on it the other day when he saw an airplane in the sky. He pointed to the airplane, then to the picture on his shirt, and said, "plane, plane." Well, it was more like "pay, pay," but we knew what he meant. Also, whenever he sees the University of Georgia-style letter "G", he says "Grandpa!" because Grandpa has a big UGA sign for his car. So apparently he thinks that the "G" stands for Grandpa, and Grandpa has lots of fans. He'll probably think the whole state loves Grandpa once football season starts.
Speaking of football, with no Little Gym classes this summer, James has developed his own training regimen. Here we see him working on his linebacker drills. We prefer it when he uses cushiony furniture for tackling dummies, but he occasionally employs other things like toys, walls, and Daddy.
