elephant man (er, boy)

caleb has an obsession, and it's a big one.

i don't know where it came from, but we first noticed how serious it was when he saw a segment on elephants on our planet earth dvd's and then started requesting it more often than his requests to watch signing time. he does this by going 'vvvvvvvoooooooo' which is his version of what an elephant says.

 he didn't want to see arctic foxes or lemurs, those were met with 'nu, nu, nu.'  he'll patiently sit though the birds of paradise, but it doesn't really get him excited.

but when the elephants come on the scene, it's a barrage of 'VVVVVVVVOOOOOOOOOO!' and then 'bubble' when the elephants blow bubbles in the water, and then 'bye bye' when they head back into the jungle.  this is quickly followed by his signing 'again.' he can watch the same 4 minute segment of elephants coming and going as many times as i'm willing to let him without the 'bad mommy' guilt striking and still get upset when i turn it off. 

we went to the zoo the other day, with my friend and her baby, and right off the bat, we hit the elephants. he didn't get super excited like i'd expected, i think because he gets to see elephants almost every day, and also because they were eating and facing away the whole time we were there.  but it still brought a huge smile to his face.

he actually was more excited about the elephant statue than the real ones, but he did get to touch it:

today i went out to run an errand, and as seb was home with him on the phone with his brother, he heard caleb repeating his elephant sound behind him and turned to see what he was doing.  he had assembled his stuffed elephant my mom gave him (which he sleeps with often,) his new small plastic elephant and an elephant card that trumpets when you open it that seb brought him from a trip, and the planet earth dvd case. he snapped a quick photo of a very happy boy who knows exactly what he likes.