So Smart

My little girl is so smart. She continues to soak up things faster than I can even process what she's learning. Her new letter identification count is A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, M, P, Q, R, S, T, W, Y, and Z . She can sometimes get L, N and X. She also has a new letter sound both the long and the short A sound courtesy of that new home preschool curriculum I started last week. She's starting to be able to identify some numbers although she's not mastered any of them completely yet. So far the ones she's been able to get at least semi regularly are 1, 2, 3, and 4. The coolest thing that has happened in her learning lately is that she now really pays attention when she is counting to be sure she counts only one number for each object that she touches (or that I point to) and then stops once she runs out of objects. Once she gets above about 7 she starts to lose track a bit when she's counting on her own. I think that as the number of objects to count increases she gets confused about which ones she's already counted. BUT if I point to the objects then she will wait for me to point to each object before she says the number and can go all the way up to 13 which is basically as far as she can count. "School" has been a huge success. We are on our second week and she couldn't be happier. The theme this week is jungle and she's just as into it already as she was the cow theme last week. We introduced her to the Disney movie version of The Jungle Book and she loves the song where the elephants march around the jungle. I bet we've watched that scene a dozen times already since Saturday! A cool benefit to Hannah's school is that she enjoys me giving her "homework" to do and this allows me to get some chores done like unload the dishwasher, make a shopping list, etc. Her homework consists of me assigning her the task of searching the house for everything that's green, square, etc OR searching through her books to find all the cows, letter A's, jungle animals, etc. It's so funny to hear her shout out from another room, "I found one! I found another one!" Along with a weekly theme, letter, number, and shape/color, the program also has a weekly nursery rhyme that usually goes along with the theme at least somewhat. You are supposed to recite it at least once each day. It took almost no time at all for Hannah to memorize last week's nursery rhyme-Hey Diddle Diddle and she's been going around saying it constantly. This week's rhyme is not as catchy (at least I don't think so since I'd never heard it before) so I'm not sure if she'll memorize it or not. I'll keep you posted!

At the moment Hannah is sick. She started getting a cold on Thursday and then on Sunday she had a fever of 100.8 degrees. It came down with Tylenol and then stayed down until about 6pm tonight and then it shot back up. She's got a ton of thick green mucus and the poor thing is coughing constantly. I'm positive she has already got me sick since I've been blowing my nose all day and am starting to feel really run down. I just hope I don't get too sick since I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up with her! Even though she's sick she's still pretty energetic and then you have to add to that needy because she doesn't feel well.

Despite being sick, Hannah had a big moment today. She pooped on the potty for the first time and also peed four separate times while she was up there. She got SO EXCITED. She kept asking me to put my hand out so that she could give me high fives. Her eyes got as big as silver dollars when she heard the splash in the toilet. It was pretty funny to see her and then hear her gasp and say, "I did it!" She had to call Kyle and leave him a message and then call Pap and Mindy and leave them a message and then call Uncle Kevin, and then finally call Mamaw and Papaw. I didn't think the phone calls would ever stop, but I didn't want to rain on her parade so I let her talk herself out.

The new bedtime and nap routine is still working very well. Hopefully this will really be the breakthrough we've been waiting for. She just seems so much better rested and less cranky which is so nice. I get a lot more done too since I can guarantee that I'll have at least an hour (sometimes more if she doesn't go right to sleep and reads for awhile) to get chores done. It is so nice!