Jamesy boy

A friend subbed in nursery in church on Sunday and told us, "You do realize that your boy is obsessed with basketball, right?" Yes, yes we know.

21-month-old James spends a lot of his time talking about "Bas-kit-ball!" and "HOOP!" on repeat. He has been this way since he could first talk.  Looking around, I realize he's surrounded by it.

The last thing he sees before falling asleep and the first thing he sees when he wakes up is the basketball-in-a-hoop light in the ceiling in his room (the very same light that used to hang in JB's boyhood room).

Our family room has a kids' basketball hoop in it. Several different-sized balls are always underfoot in our house.  Our garage has a basketball hoop on it.  There is a smaller hoop INSIDE the garage, too.  This time of year, a basketball game is almost always on TV. The church has a basketball gym. His older brothers play on Jr Jazz basketball teams.

He wants to play all the time. He thinks if we could juuussst lift him a leetle higher, he could make a basket on the taller hoops. He says "pass!" but won't pass it back. When he does pass back, it's overhand and strong. 

Thankfully he also talks about many more things and has a surprising number of words and people's names that he says and recognizes:  Nonna. Poppa! DOGGY! NIGHT-NIGHT (his blankies). ANDY! (Max and Ben's friend) AN-shoe (our Andrew), BOYS! (Max and Ben).  Teef, TEEF, TEEF! (for brushing teeth) MILK! BALL! He'll even go to the back door and bleat, "Walk. WALK!"

I put them in caps because he really just seems like he's strongly saying each word -- if not yelling them sometimes.  It makes us proud and gives us the giggles every day.