Why Alex, That's FANTASTIC!!

On Sunday, Pete was hard at work finishing up the installation of our new threshold between the carpet and tile at the kitchen/living room transition, so to keep Alex out of his way, I got out his piggy bank and helped him count the coins we've been saving for him since before he was born. Mostly it's just a collection of pennies and pocket change, but we've added a couple of five dollar bills that he got from Gigi and Popski for ice cream. Alex really enjoyed the counting, though he doesn't seem to grasp that the different sizes of coins symbolize different things. I'm not even sure that he really noticed that there were different sizes. However, he is quite aware of the paper money, which seems to utterly fascinate him. He insisted on holding the paper money, which he dubbed "tickets" and running circles through the living room shouting, "My tickets! That's FANTASTIC, Mommie!" I'm still not sure where he picked up the word 'fantastic' but it was probably on one of the PBS Kids shows that we've been watching lately. Additionally, he's broadened his scope by not only soliciting friends with the conversation opener, "Hi! I watch Little Einsteins!" but also with variants including Caillou,Jay Jay the Jet Plane and Roger's Neighborhood (Mister Roger's Neighborhood).