smarty britches

Squirt taught me a new game this afternoon during my daily lunch-break daycare visit. I had her in my arms and was walking across the room to sit with her when she pointed at one of the doodads hanging from the ceiling. I paused and told her, "That's a monkey." She smiled and poked at it for a while, then she pointed at another doodad across the room. I walked over to it and said, "That's a fish." We repeated this process until I had identified all of the hanging doodads. I thought that would be the end of that and got ready to sit down so we could play when she pointed at the monkey again. "Monkey," I said. She repeated the process one more time, smiling as I re-identified the doodads. I could almost see the gears in her mind working. On a whim, I asked her, "Where's the monkey?" She immediately pointed at the monkey. I laughed out loud! Surely this must have been a one-time thing. So I asked her, "Where's the fish?" *point* "Where's the balloon?" *point* "Where's the parrot?" *look around... point* We continued this game over and over.

But it gets better.

After a while, she wanted to get down and play, so we sat on the mats and played. I thought I'd try my luck with another brain game. As she played, I started pointing at vividly colored objects, identifying the color. After doing this a few times she would crawl over and touch something of the specified color. I would smile (ok, grin like an idiot is more like it) and praise her: "Yes, that's blue!" And then she would babble "bla bla blllla." When she pointed out something green she would babble "gr ga graa" and with yellow "ya ya ya." I was so amazed and excited! Apparently, she has been doing this for some time at daycare, but I had never noticed! She had to teach me how to play this new "game" and it is so very exciting! She really is a smarty britches and I can't wait to start teaching her more words and object affiliations!

I'm a smarty and I know it.