I’m figuring out (over and over) that parenting can probably best be defined as a state of perpetual inadequacy punctuated by brief episodes of competence. Some people are more inadequate than others, of course. Thankfully, despite all my shortcomings, Ava appears to be growing up to be pretty bright. She’s certainly vivacious, and she knows how to work a crowd.
For the past couple weeks she’s been into singing her ABCs and counting from 1 to as high as 14. In each case, there are some missed or mangled letters or numbers (she always skips 8, for some reason, and “l m n o p” is a tricky patch of the alphabet for her tiny tongue and lips), but she definitely gets the gist. It’s a ball to watch how she learns. The ABCs are little more than a song to her at this point. When we pull out a letter A or B or C and show it to her, she can only guess at what we’re holding. And when I hold up three fingers and ask her how many that is, she’ll as likely say, “one!” as the correct answer. But you can see her little mind working away, and it’s beautiful.
I was giving Ava a bath the other night, and we were looking at her floatie letters to try to guess which colors they were. I’d reach into the wicker basket next to the tub, pull out a letter, then put it on the side of the tub and ask Ava what color it was. She has this hilarious process she goes through now where she’ll guess a color, like red, and then when I say, “nooo,” she says, “No. Hmmm.” then she purses her lips and makes a little sucking noise like she’s really going for the right answer before she guesses again. “Blue!” “Noooo,” I say. “No. Hmmm. Red!” “Nooo.” And on and on until she guesses right.
Oddly enough, the one color she seems to be able to nail every time is pink. Go figure.