She's using numbers and stuff

Andrew was cleaning up some of Rachel's playthings and she was adamantly asking him not to.

He picked up a little pink broom and she said, "No, not my sweep-it!"

Then he tried picking up her teddy bear, but she stopped him with, "That's my tebby bear!"


It takes a long time to get things picked up with her around.

________________________

She loves Cinderella and is learning the songs from the movie. Sometimes we hear her singing her favorite, A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, around the house; she just sang it to baby Miriam for us.

"A dream is your heart your wish come true!"

We're still working on nailing the actual lyrics; she mostly just throws a lot of dreams, hearts, and wishes around with a lilting tune.

________________________

When we're out walking, she yells at both cars and pedestrians. She's caring like that.

"Hey! Don't hit me! Don't hit meeeeee!"

"Watch out, mister! Watch out! Don't hit hiiiiiiiim!"

________________________

Tonight she asked to have lentils for dinner. Her vocabulary also includes things like donkey cart, pyramids, pomegranate, mango, tomb, museum, mural, statue, President Mubarak, hijab, mosque, minaret, and things like that. For some reason it just cracks me up.

________________________

She's very interested in letters and numbers right now, and by extension reading and counting. She's always bringing things to me and asking me what they say--books, packages, scraps of paper from my purse. She even "reads" the cereal box. She can recognize some letters. Her favorite letter is R for some reason--because R is for Rachel, if you couldn't guess.

When she names things she likes the name to match the object, for example, the other day she handed me a toy hammer and asked what it's name was. I suggested Charlie.

"No, Mommy!" she said aghast, "He needs a huh-name."

Thanks to The Letter Factory, she often calls letters by their sounds instead of their names. We ended up naming him Harry, I think. Or Henry. I can't remember. Hopefully she doesn't ask me for his name again or I will fail. She's always quizzing me on the names of her toys.

She's getting her ABC's down, but after the initial ABC things start getting a little confused. A-B-C-F-G is often how she'll sing it. With enough prompting she can do better; one day she'll have the whole song down, I'm sure.

Her counting is equally hit and miss. She can count to ten, even eleven, but only when she's really focused. Only on rare occasions can I get her to count from one to ten using only one language. She's always throwing Arabic (or English) in there.She favors one, two, and three in both English or Arabic. Maybe soon she'll add f-f-f-four.

________________________

I can count, too. It's basically official. Andrew made me count the whole way to the grocery store this evening until I begged him to stop because my head was hurting from figuring it all out.

"Okay, 256!" he'd prompt.

"Miatain...wa....sitta....wa...khamsein./مائتين وستة وخمسين"

"That's right! But the 'wa' after 200 is optional. It should be miatain sitta wa khamsein."

"The 'wa' might be optional for you, but I need it in there. It gives me more time to think."

"I see. How about 937?"

"Stop."

Counting makes my head hurt. The way I see it I only need to stay one number ahead of Rachel so I can continue to teach her. That means I only need to count to four.