A Shameless Brag

Brendan continues to amaze me with how fast he picks up sign language. Today he learned the sign for car. He heard a group of grackles chattering in the yard and started signing bird. He heard an airplane fly by and signed plane - complete with sound effects! Today I began to teach him fingerspelling along with the spoken alphabet. (I've been singing the alphabet song to him for a very long time, but I've just begun asking him to repeat the letters after me.) He tried to repeat every letter, sign and spoken. He got the pronunciation of almost half the letters right. His fingerspelling wasn't so great, but I've just begun to teach him that and it's rather difficult for such a young child to form those signs perfectly. He did make very good attempts at it. He signs many words while he says them.
He's also becoming a very polite, helpful child. He usually says please when he asks for something. And when he forgets, he's quite happy to say when we remind him. He almost always remembers to say thank you. I very seldom have to remind him of that. He hands me wipes when I'm changing Luke's diaper, takes things to the garbage when asked, helps me scrape plates after meals and today he "helped" me wash dishes.
Luke is walking fairly well now. He can even stand himself up now without holding onto anything! He hasn't started signing yet, but he does watch very intently when he sees people signing.