3-4-5

This evening at dinner while she was ignoring the corn and making faces at the spinach while trying to dig out the beans Fiona started counting, pointing at spots along the edge of the table to indicate each number. As she continued, Andrea and I looked at each other in astonishment:

"Three"
"Four"
"Five"
"Six"
"Seven"
"Eight"
"Nine"
"Ten"

She skips one and two, and you certainly couldn't show her, say, four widgets and expect her to tell you how many there were. But it's impressive nevertheless to see her get the numbers in the right order, especially since we haven't exactly been drilling her with flashcards for the past 21 months trying to build a genius baby. We count blocks with her when she builds towers, and she sees the Count on Sesame Street every morning, and I'm sure she hears some counting at day care, but it's still impressive.

There is one additional bug in the system that I haven't quite figured out (besides not being aware of 1 and 2). Sometimes when she counts, it goes like this:

"Three"
"Four"
"Five"
"Six"
"Seven"
"Twelve"

Both times I've seen her count out of order 12 followed 7. I know 7 and 12 are both numbers that recur in a lot of contexts (days of the week, months of the year; deadly sins, apostles), but I doubt Fiona's thinking at quite that level yet. But you never know.