Night time chats and morning reads

We've been really entertained by Tate at night lately. He falls asleep after spending quite some time chatting with himself about his day. He'll count: "One, two, three, four, ten, twelve..." and chat about his family members: "Aunt Lauren. Uncle Mike. Gramps!  CeCe...."  or some of his other favorite things: "Music class!  Trucks. White truck. Red truck. Vrrrrrrooooom!"

Last night he was still rolling around his crib around 9 PM or so, and I was watching him on our monitor just because...well, I can't get enough of him!  I turned up the volume to hear what he was saying, and it was this: "I like to talk!  I like to talk. Talk talk talk."  I'm sure he picked up the line from "Hop on Pop" (we like to talk, we like to walk) but in this case it couldn't be more true!

In addition to his increasingly grown-up vocabulary, T-man has taken up some other habits that remind me eerily of his dad. For instance, reading at the breakfast table:

I'm not condoning reading at the table (and in fact get on Bruce from time to time to turn off the Blackberry or put down the paper!), but this was pretty darned cute.

It's just a matter of time before he makes the leap from the Babies R Us insert to front page news. I need to savor these innocent pre-news days while I can!

PS--I just noticed the resemblance between that top photo of Tate reading and the photo from when he was just a little guy with our dog, Liam, at the very top of the blog. The furrowed brow, the little dimpled chin--so similar! It made me smile.