"Nice"

Brock continues to be a sponge for words and enthusiastically practices the ones he knows. It's incredible to hear how articulate some of his favorite words have become in only a few weeks, while still being completely stumped deciphering a new one he's trying to tackle. Here's a few clips of some talking. 

There's a lot of weird and bold parenting advice floating around these days, and I know that some readers of this blog are familiar with the movement to remove the phrase "good job" from your parenting lexicon. I don't personally buy into it, but I do admire the concept of focusing your child on  the intrinsic value of their accomplishments over the short term pleasure of your praise. So anyways, I say "good job" to Brock all the time, but it's always in there, in the back of my mind: am I saying it too much? It's weird. Anyways, if you are conscious of it, and trying to cut back, you find how difficult it it to come up with suitable replacement phrases. I mostly settled in on "you did it!" (sounds kinda cheesy and lame, but I use it) and "nice!" (too chillax? but use this one a lot). 

Yesterday Brock was playing by himself in the living room, so I took the short break to check some emails. He was playing with the toy where you push the variously-shaped prisms through their appropriately-shaped holes. As the first one went through, he smiled to himself and said, "nice." It was the first time I'd ever heard him say it, and it melted my heart. I got to hear it many more times, block after block, and it was amazing. Great job Brock!