Buttons, Knobs and Switches, Oh My!

Buttons

 Nathan loves to push buttons!  He LOVES it when I hand him my kitchen timer, because with every button he pushes, he is rewarded with a cool beeping sound.  He turns it this way and that, fingers sliding around the beeping keypad - minutes of fun to be had!

Nathan also has developed a fascination with the red release button in his carseat.  In previous months, as soon as Mom or Dad would open his door, he would begin arching his back and doing everything in his power to launch himself out of the carseat.  That has now all changed.  We'll unbuckle his harness, then we have to wait for him to examine the red button, try to push the red button, consider the deeper meaning of the red button, before FINALLY he is ready to be taken out of his car seat.

As we are slowly working to arrange furniture and whatnot in the playroom, lately we set up a stereo in the bottom of the TV cabinet.  I was excited to listen to some music while Nathan and I were playing downstairs, so I turned it on and tuned into my favorite radio station.  I didn't even get to enjoy it for 5 minutes before our son had scooted over and started pushing random buttons.  For the most part these buttons don't make noise (unless you're changing the radio station) but they do light up and/or flash when pushed, so he loves that as well!

Knobs

I think Nathan thinks knobs are buttons that he hasn't figured out yet.  He'll stand at the upstairs TV cabinet and push the knobs on the front.  Nothing happens, of course, but Nathan can be persistent!

Related to knobs are the door and drawer pulls in the kitchen, bathroom and on other furniture around the house.  Although the kitchen drawers are too hard for Nathan to pull out on his own, he loves to open and close the cabinets and drawers in the bathroom, the laundry chute (which also makes a great loud noise when you bang on it), and the drawers in my desk.  The drawer pulls in our master bedroom don't pull easily, but they have a portion that hangs down that's fun to play with as well.

Switches

Light switches.  Nathan thinks they were invented just to entertain him.  He loves for Brian or me to pick him up and walk around the house turning light switches on and off.  We haven't taught him yet how to do the ones in our bathroom (which are turned 90 degrees from normal switches) and he doesn't yet have the strength in his hands to push in the switches on the vent fan in the kitchen, but its only a matter of time!