A, You're Adorable

My daughter is absolutely brilliant and there's just no getting around it! In a past post, I mentioned that we had talked about the letter "M" and that she recognized all letters as such. Well, my friends, those times are in the past. Miriam definately knows what letters are and can distinguish a whole bunch of them. One of her favorite songs is the ABC song. In fact, when she chooses which song to sing to Baby Eli, 90% of the time, that's the one he gets. Once she was running with her dad and she stopped at a big sign that is low to the ground and she started singing the ABC song. She totally recognizes that letters are a big part of this world and they are everywhere. She has had "O" down for a long time, and once when we were in Boise, I pointed to a Boise sign and asked her to find the "O." She pointed right to it. I didn't know she knew "B," but she then pointed to the "B" and said "B!" She knows "B!" At this point, she gets B, H, I, M, O, S, and X almost always. She usually gets A, D, E, F, P, and Z. It makes me proud as a parent that she sometimes points these letters out in public. The other day we were at the checkout of a grocery store. The word "Bakery" was written in huge letters on the wall. She pointed to it and clearly said "B." "Yep," I said, "that's the letter B!" The checker was absolutely amazed. Her choosing which letters to learn is affected by other things. She has recently developed an obsession for the Wiggles. This has been enthusiastically fostered by her dad. She can name all of the colors of the Wiggles (red, blue, yellow, and purple), can name two of them with color (purple is Jeff and yellow is Sam [sorry to all of you early Wiggle watchers who knew the Wiggles when Greg was yellow]), and can identify which color of Wiggle is whose favorite (Dad likes blue, Miriam likes yellow, Zeke likes red, and luckily I haven't had to choose a favorite). Anyway, one day she was playing with her alphabet letter magnets at the fridge and she started freaking out about the Wiggles. It seemed odd to me, but it turns out that she had found this letter "g," which is in the same font that is used in the Wiggles name and she hooked the two together. For a long time, she would pick this letter up, and use it to instigate a request to watch the Wiggles. She would hold it lovingly as she danced and sang along with them. Now, she always identifies "g"s that are in this font as "Wiggles!" I'm trying to make it be "Wiggles g," but it's a slow process. Needless to say, she looks for and finds letters all around the house. For Christmas, my sister-in-law Jenn made us these adorable letter blocks that spell out "FAMILY." We have them up in the bedroom and Miriam loves looking at them because there is the "M" and the "I" that she's really good at. And it is because of these letter blocks that she is starting to find "F" and "A" in other places. We haven't started lowercase letters (with the grand exception of the Wiggles g, of course) and last week when the number 2 was in a puzzle she was working on, she said it was an S. There is definately room for growth, but I am going to end just as I started. My daughter is absolutely brilliant and there's just no getting around it!