Numbers

My little girl just blows my mind. Tonight I about fell into the bathtub as I was washing her hair. She was playing with the water and I wasn't paying much attention until I heard her say, "I see a number 4." Before I could even process what she had said she pointed at it on the measuring cup she was holding. Then she said, "I see a number 2." Then she pointed to it on the cup. I ended up asking her if she could find other numbers and she pointed to 0-6, and 8 on the measuring cup (there wasn't a 7 or a 9) all in random order. At first I thought maybe she was somehow counting them and she was guessing the numerals that way, but then I realized that the side she was looking at was counting the ounces by 2s. Then I flipped the cup over and started asking her the numbers 0-5 in random order from the (100-500) ml side of the cup. The reason I'm so amazed by this newest feat of hers is that I HAVEN'T taught her or worked with her on numerals except for 0-2 from her home preschool program. She has either learned them from her Baby Einstein/Sesame Street DVDs or from her counting books. I'm not sure which did it, but it's certain that any of the learning was simply soaked up and not directly taught. I think it's just crazy how easy numbers come to her. They don't come easy to me. If Hannah wasn't adopted I'd say she got her number smarts from her daddy the engineer, but Kyle's gene's had nothing to do with it! :) My little girl's just smart.

Yesterday we had a nice visit with Tiffany, Hannah's birthmother, and her twins and Tiffany's mom. We had Easter pictures taken with all of the kids again like we did last year and it went much better this time. Last year was a complete and utter disaster as far as the pictures were concerned. Chase was so excited to see Hannah that he was invading her personal space which is never a good idea with Hannah, we had a male photographer who wasn't good with any of the kids, and Hannah was experiencing severe stranger and separation anxiety. The combination was not good. We didn't get a single good picture of the 3 of them. This year we had a much more successful time. Tiffany and I were laughing as we were looking at the proofs because the pics we were immediately dismissing this year were as good as or better than the one we eventually ended up buying last year! Hannah had a blast running around chasing Chase and tickling Kayla. She even warmed up quickly to Tiffany and let her hold her and gave spontaneous hugs, kisses, and "I Love You"s as we were leaving. I was so proud of my little girl for making her birthfamily feel so happy.

Potty training is going fairly well. Hannah pees every single time I sit her on the potty almost as soon as I get her up there. She definitely knows how to pee at will. We got her some big girl underwear and plastic covers and have had two full days (not in a row though!) wearing them. The first day we started out strong and then quickly fell apart. We went through every single pair of underwear before it was even 2:00pm! We also went through almost all of her pants! Part of the problem was that I wasn't very organized and I really had no idea exactly how often she really needed to pee since diapers are so absorbent that you can't really tell they are wet until they are very wet. Consequently, I had no way of knowing if she peed a lot all at once or a little bit at a time until it all added up to a wet diaper. I found out it was the latter that fist day. Today I had a better plan of action and set a timer to take her to the bathroom every 30 minutes. She actually peed every single time a significant amount. We had only had one accident by 4:00pm! Then as she started to get tired and cranky things went down hill and we had 3 more accidents before it was time for bed at 7:00pm, but I still think that it was a successful day considering it was only her second time ever wearing big girl underwear. She even managed to poop in the potty 2 separate times today too!
Another sign that my little girl is growing up is that she has officially ditched her highchair. We got her this really cool thing that boosts her chair at the table up. Instead of a booster seat that sits on top of the chair and then Hannah sits in the booster, this is a device that the chair sits on top of and lifts the chair up so that Hannah actually sits on the dining room table chair just like Kyle and I do. It's called a Kaboost and it's really cool. Kudos to Kyle for finding it on the Internet.

School continues to go well. Tomorrow will be the end of our 4th week. The theme this week was eyes and Hannah as usual got really into it. The theme for next week is lighthouses which I'm not super excited about so I'll be interested to see how much Hannah likes it. I can't imagine lighthouses will be very interesting for an extremely active 21 month old girl. Maybe I'll be surprised. Today when we worked on our alphabet the only letters Hannah failed to identify (in random order) on the first try were N, U, and X. She called N "z" and X "y" I thought that was really pretty good. The sounds she currently knows are A, B, C, D, E, I, H, J, M, P, R, S, T, W, and Z. She has A-D, M, W, and R mastered. The other ones can be hit or miss sometimes.
Here are some videos from the last few months that I finally got uploaded onto Google. Enjoy.

Hannah reading books. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4767920472411038267&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6115836828758160927&hl=en

Hannah and I playing Super Grover. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5298892368292382119&hl=en

Hannah splashing in her first puddle. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6569501497617515300&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7218410685235990009&hl=en