ABC, easy as 123

M has an intense love of letters and numbers. His eyes are always on the lookout for ABCs and 123s, for example:

He picked up our shower squeegee and said "Big T, Big T"
A coffeee table was moved and left an indentation on the carpet. M said "L!"
When he noticed a horseshoe nailed to the ceiling of an art gallery, he exclaimed, "C!, C!"

This morning our plans were changed, so I needed to get ready quickly. I decided to let him watch a cartoon and there was a show called "Super Why" on PBS. From my bathroom I heard the character ask, "What letter makes the "tuh" sound?" and M responded "T!"...so I went in to see what was up. This continued with the letters O and P. He got both correct. Then I asked him "what word did you spell?" He said matter of factly, "stop." (Now I must say that we have talked about the word stop before when we see stop signs).

I listened to M participate in the rest of the show...answering all of the questions correctly. I decided to take him to the PBS SuperWhy website for some more action. In the "spelling bee" game, he correctly spelled cat, can, and bell all by himself by listening to the sounds and picking the right letter.

I am astounded not only by his development in this area but also by his interest. We haven't tried to push learning the letters and numbers on him. In fact, I have been a little leery about it wondering what in the world he will do in kindergarten if he already knows such things. But M is just really interested in them (intense looooove), so we have tried to follow his lead.

Now if I could only get him to love sharing his toys!

Our Gymboree Experience

So we went for a free class at Gymboree today. It was my first time ever setting foot in one of their facilities. Matthew's too...haha! Matthew was the only dude in the class and the 2nd biggest--the ages were 8 months, 9 months, and 14 months. Not really having seen him around other babies much, I am happy to say he is WAY AWESOME in his development! Not including the 14 month old, he was probably the highest in terms of his physical abilities...not bad for a kid who could barely sit up by himself two months ago!

So, anyway, the whole Gymboree thing has three strikes against it:

1. The class is at noon, so it kind of messes up his morning nap/lunch routine.

2. The mothers are supposed to sing...a lot...in really high voices...about 100 octaves higher than what I can sing. No kidding. The teacher sounded like she should be singing on Broadway not at Gymboree....but maybe she is just "in between shows."

3. All the other babies in the class sleep through the night so I'm not sure their mothers can be trusted.

So...I guess if we decide to return I will have to enroll in some singing lessons.