Tag Archives: smart cookie

G-R-A-C-E-N

IMG 5675Gracen’s been interested in letters, their names, their sounds, and words that begin with them for quite some time now.  She’s also known how to verbally spell her name for just as long (longer actually), but the two had never really come together.  While she’s asked me to print her name quite a lot, she’s never attempted to ‘make’ her name using her foam bathtub letters, her letter magnets, or any of the other alphabet manipulatives we have around the house.  

Until tonight that is…

This evening she came to me as I was preparing dinner and said, “Mama, come see!”  I went into her room to find that she’d climbed up onto her shelf, retrieved her baby blocks, and was carefully arranging them in order to spell her name.

IMG 5679

Smart little cookie.

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Mail Days

Gracen’s obsession with our “mail store” continues…  She knows when we’re about to drive by it and will always point it out, ask if we can go in, or announce that she has her “eyes peeled (for) mail trucks”.  This afternoon when we drove by, she asked if we could visit the “mail lady”. I explained that it was closed because it was Sunday and that we would visit once it opened on Tuesday.  This is what she had to say afterwards…

Gracen: Mail store closed Sundays.

Mama: Mmmhmm.

Gracen: Mail store open school days?

Ummmm…  What the what?!  I’m fairly certain we’ve never talked about weekends vs. school days or about the days of the week at all for that matter.  How in the world does our just-turned-two-year old know about ‘school days’?!

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The Alphabet Song, by Grae

I know that this doesn’t mean that she can recognize all of her letters, or that she knows what they mean, but I just can’t help myself… I’m having a proud mama moment over here.  My baby girl can sing the entire alphabet song (save a little ‘R’ / ‘S’ confusion) all by herself now.  Here’s what I got to listen to all day long today…

Lucky me!

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The Alphabet Song

Brad and I are constantly blown away by how quickly Grae learns things. She just soaks up information and makes connections like crazy.  Just a couple of days ago, she started showing interest in singing the alphabet song. At first she’d sing random strings of letters – “A B P C B D X” to the tune of the song, and now, depending on the time, she can pretty much sing it in its entirety.  

Today, while at Grey’s Park surrounded by swings, climbing apparatuses, kids, and a wading pool, she wanted nothing more than to lay on our blanket and sing her ABCs again and again. Here’s a little video I managed to catch…

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Gracen Counts

For a long while now, Grae could count to 2 and would just continue saying, “One, two, one, two, one, two…” for sets of objects larger than a pair.  Just before we left on vacation, she added 3 into her repertoire, and while in the Okanagan she added 4 and 5.  It’s really incredible to ask your firstborn baby how many blueberries she has or how many markers there are and watch her count them up and proudly announce her answer.

How she grew up and learned all of these things so quickly is beyond me, but she can now count sets of things up to 7 on her own, and up to 9 if you help her with the number 8…

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Gracen Reads

Gracen has loved books and ‘reading’ or being read to ever since she was an itty bitty thing and will literally bring you one book after the next all day long if you continue to read them. Just recently though, she’s started letting us know that she’d like to be the reader and we can be the audience.  I can’t explain how happy it makes me to listen to her stories and share in her love of books. This was this morning’s story…

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One… Two…

A while back Gracen learned how to count {to two!} and she’s been counting things ever since.  This morning I took a little video of her counting the stairs to send to her grandparents, and when we arrived home this evening from picking up Papa, she wanted me to take another.  She waited until I got my phone out, then began climbing when she knew I was good and ready.  Obviously she lost track of what she was demonstrating, and when Papa asked if she was going to keep counting, it was back down to the bottom again!  My favourite part is her full-on army crawl up the stairs by the end.  I have no idea what that was all about, but it was hilarious.

Body Parts by Grae

I love this video for so many reasons…  Between the cracker chomping, the newly acquired “no”, the fuzzy post-nap hair, the worrying about something being dirty, the exceptional pot belly, and outgrown outfit, this video is all Grae.

Smarty Pants

While doing a little bit of organizing tonight, I came across these picture cards Grandma Charlotte gave to Gracen months ago.  At the time, Grae was more into chewing on them than looking at them, but that’s not the case any more.  She immediately opened the box, placed several on the floor, and said “Mama?” in the way she does when she wants me to ask her about something.  This is the first time she laid eyes on them since she was 10 months old.  Smart little doodle.  I have a feeling we’ll be doing a lot of this in the next few days…

Animal Admirer

Gracen loves being read to, but more than anything these days, she wants to be asked to point out certain things while flipping through books.  Mix that with the fact that she’s completely and totally obsessed with animals, and there’s really no reading books about animals.  This is what happens instead.

 

And she could go on and on and on…

Could it be?

First of all, a little background info…  Lately Gracen has really been into hearts and stars.  I’m not sure how this interest came about really, but we do have a wooden shape puzzle that we play with daily and we’ve borrowed several books about shapes from our local library.  Either way, the girl likes hearts and stars.  She sees them everywhere (on posters, in store windows, in books,  at the playground) and enthusiastically points them out while declaring, “Heart!” or “Star!”

IMG 5659Well today, just before her guests arrived, she was happily drawing on her chalkboard when she stopped, pointed, and said, “Heart!  Heart!”  Now I know that every parent thinks that their child is a genius and I’m 100% guilty of thinking Grae is quite clever, but is it just me or does this really look like a heart?!

IMG 5661Here’s a closer look. Am I just crazy?  Does anyone else see the orange heart?  Now I’m sure it was just a fluke, but either way, this mama is impressed.