Is it playing or learning, or both?

Here are some pictures from the Granada Park last week. We had fun watching the birds dunk their heads down to eat fish, quack to ask for food and just cruise around the "lake." I say "lake" because it's all man made. But, we get to see the animals in action. At first, I just thought it would be fun to watch the birds but I'm sure Patrick is learning about their habits, and it is fun. While we were leaving the park I was acting like a dork and saying "horsey" and putting his Wells Fargo Bank horsey on his lap and he squealed back, "HORSEY." Wow, that was pretty cool. Since then he's started repeating words back. Not that often but here and there. It think I heard him repeating "all done" while in his bed before his afternoon nap yesterday. That's what I say when we're done eating or bathing or whatever. We'd just finished lunch. So cute. I guess I need to start be careful about what I say around him. I'm usually pretty good but you never know what comes out sometimes.

His new favorite thing to do is read books. He whips his head around when I say the word "book." He loves, I mean loves, to turn the pages of books. He really could care less about the story at this point but man, those pages are fun to turn. We will repeat page turning on a single book maybe 8 or 9 times until Mommy gets a little bored and tries to find a new book.

We're off to the zoo today for some more fun and learning. I read about bringing the book that you read to your kid about animals to the zoo so that they can make the connection but I am not sure if our zoo has tree frogs and koalas. Oh well. :)

We adults could pack some more learning into our days too. I just found a cool link to free podcasts from college lectures. http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/skip-the-tuition:-100-free-podcasts-from-the-best-colleges-in-the-world. I especially like the one on Nintendo and Black Holes. Neat.