Mad skills

Last night was eventful, at least relative to the toddler-raising crowd.  Three things:

1.  I was making dinner, and Squiggles was playing with fridge magnets, jabbering to herself.  Suddenly, I heard, “One, two, free, four, five…. six, seven, eight…. nine…. six!”  My daughter can (kind of) count!  Or at least recite a sequence of sounds…

2.  Along the same vein, as we were doing dishes, Squiggles suddenly burst into song. I have never heard the girl sing a note, not one.  And what did she sing?  The entire alphabet song.  What??? She has been seriously holding out on us.  Tim informs me that he sings it to her every night, and that he has been reading counting books with her.  Well.  I did not know this.

We haven’t pushed any milestones with Squiggles (read: I have put almost no effort into her academic development other than reading to her every day) – she has plenty of time to learn how to read and count and such, and mostly I just want her to enjoy being a two-year-old.  I’m pretty sure the other kids in her preschool class all know Spanish and Chinese and are doing fractions and long division.

I’m just highly amused by my daughter’s quirky personality… she stores up information, and then proudly displays her skills once she has mastered them.  For example,

2b.  The other day we were going for our evening walk, and Squiggles declared that she was going to put on her jacket “all by myself, Mommy.”  I laughed and said, “Go ahead and try, Sweetie.”  She splayed her jacket on the ground in front of her, put her hands in the sleeve openings, and thrust it over her head while moving her arms into the sleeves.  I was all astonishment.  I did not know this trick (I assume she learned it at preschool).  She was so proud of herself and just absolutely delighted when Tim and I broke into applause.

3.  Squiggles came home from preschool yesterday all abuzz about the “chicken dance.”  Later that evening, and once again in the kitchen, I started singing the melody to the chicken dance (“da da da da da da da”).  Tim and I did the actions to the dance, and I thought my daughter was going to have an aneurism of joy.  She did the dance with us (well, kind of…), squealing and laughing constantly, and intermittently running around like a crazy head and jumping.  She ran and hugged Tim’s legs like he was the greatest hero on earth for knowing how to do the chicken dance.  There were lots of giggles… and it looks like it might become a nightly kitchen dance party.  It’s funny how two fairly serious adults will do just about anything to make a little girl smile.

All this to say… I’m completely in love with that girl of mine.