Chalk another one up for Teacher Melina!

I don't want to brag or anything, but....okay, maybe I do. Just for a minute.

Zoey has been singing her ABC's this past week! On Monday I just thought it was cute, as she would chant "A, B, C....G!", then look at us triumphantly and wait for the ensuing praise that Bryan and I would lavish on her. By Wednesday, we had worked our way up to Letter H, all in the correct order. And today, Bryan swears she made it to Letter P, with only minor stumbling over that pesky L-M-N-O rapid-fire sequence. I can hear her in her crib right now, singing herself to sleep with the ABC's, and other favorites: "All day long!" (from The Wheels on the Bus), "Boom boom boom! Ya Ya Ya!" (from some random song that Ari loves), and, of course, the ABC's. I'm so proud of her.

And yet, I feel as if I had very little to do with this progress!

That's right, I need to give credit where credit is due, and I believe this one goes to Teacher Melina. I'm not really a mom who believes that her toddler needs to have serious time with flash cards and word association games at home. It has also been well established that I am NOT a singer. And let's face it: if you ask Zoey who sings the ABC's with her, she'll smile shyly and say "Cheecher 'Nina". I think it's totally adorable and a little amazing that she has spent only two months in preschool and has caught on to so many things, from singing to sitting still for long periods of time to creating vast quantities of art work involving glitter. (She proudly presents me with her brown triangle with the blue glitter, every morning, and reports "'Tangle! Shake shake shake, gitter! Cheecher 'Nina!")

Maybe this is just normal development for a child who is just shy of two years old. What with this being my first experience with toddlerhood, I really have no frame of reference. But I'm still just so...impressed.