The Countess

No joke. My girl can count to ten! Seriously!

(Okay, at this point, I realize that every single time I post about my girl, I really should be using the pronoun our girl since Eric has an equal share in loving Elaina as well.)

So, back to the counting. This evening, I asked Elaina if we could count together. With a nod of her head, (remember she doesn't prefer to answer "yes") I began with a slow, drawn out, "one..."

Elaina proceeded with "two." I repeated her response and she then moved onto "three." After each number she said in proper order, I confirmed her number by repeating it each time. To my shock and amazement, she spit out each consecutive number, one after another! Effortlessly! With each passing number, I mentally prepared myself to accept that the next number could be the one she would stumble on - but no, she went all the way to nine and then screamed, "ten!"

I am totally impressed! Again, there's not a day that goes by that she will cease to astound me. Whether it be in her words, her actions or her 19 month-old self just acting on her feelings, she is incredible!

Now, to give credit where credit is due.... Eric had everything to do with teaching Elaina her numbers. (Props to my husband too -Sweet!) Every morning, he is the one to feed Elaina breakfast and they practice their numbers together. Most often it starts with him offering her a "one" for her to follow with, "two" and him, "three," and so on and so forth. She gets it! She really gets it!!

In the meantime, I have been the alphabet- song- tutor to our child. We never really talked about establishing learning roles for ourselves, but I'd have to guess that I took on the alphabet song since I am so musically inclined. (Eric is probably wetting himself over this humor about now.) Maybe? Maybe, it's just because since Elaina was a baby, I would sing the alphabet song to her in the bathtub to keep her attention and hopefully soothe her. From there, I took it a step further, knowing that I could belt out 2 repeats of the song in the time it took to drive to the babysitter's house and still have time to tell her how much I love her and wish her a good day playing with her friends. If you were Eric, would you mess with the system? Good thing he focused on the numbers. By the way, she's loves the alphabet tune and pulls random strands of letters out occasionally to sing along with.

At this point, I have just been reduced to a proud, gushing river of sentiment and feeling so much joy in being Elaina's mom. Pretty much sets the tone of all of my days with our girl.