A Pleasant Surprise

Last Sunday, we were all hanging out in our home, and Pete was playing with the kids.  He was holding a numbered flash card and he asked Hannah if she wanted the card.  Hannah was going about her *work*, moving blocks and stacking toys, walking around here and there, seemingly ignoring her Daddy.

Pete asked a few times if she wanted the card, but she didn’t respond.  He asked, “Hannah, do you want this?” and “Come Hannah, Daddy will give this card to you…”

Then all of a sudden, Hannah ran towards her Daddy, swiped the card from his hand and said, “I dowan FOUR!”

Pete was dumbfounded, because he was indeed holding the card with the number 4 on it.

You see, up till then, we hadn’t realized that Hannah could recognize numbers.  We only know that she could count 1-10 by rote.

Pleasantly surprised, we tested her newfound skill further by holding up a few other numbered cards, and she could tell us most of the numbers 1-9.  Sometimes she would confuse 9 and 7 because of their similar shapes, but it’s a great start.  Of course, Ethan tried to get Hannah to say the numbers 11-20 too.. LOL

The wonderful thing is that we didn’t even teach her how to say those numbers, because we don’t believe in forcing a young toddler to learn numbers or alphabets.  She just picked it up on her own, probably through observation. 🙂 … or probably it’s just in her genes. 😛 … or perhaps because she is a breastfed baby! 🙂