Blarney Stones and Milestones

In anticipation of St. Patrick's Day tomorrow Josie made a Blarney Stone with the Stroller Strides playgroup today. She absolutely loves painting so don't be fooled by her solemn expression. The activity didn't fully scratch her craft itch for the day as she requested brown paint and additional eyes.

Clever Mama dressed her in a green shirt to match the stains!

Gluing puffs and eyes to Blarney Stone

Ogling Ms. Wendy's bag of eyes

Kissing the real Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle is supposed to bring the gift of gab. Josie is already quite adept in this department. It's time to take stock of the verbal milestones she has reached in the last few months.

• In late January (19 months old) Josie could identify almost all the letters of the alphabet, but would confuse E/F, M/N, X/Y/Z. For the past couple weeks she has consistently been able to recognize all the capital letters although she still has trouble with the letter I.
  Despite this progress she still sings the alphabet "A B C B! A B C B!" often followed by random letters including a lot of O's.
  
• Josie can identify all the colors of the rainbow including black and white.
• Yesterday Mama heard her say "...O-S-I-E ... Josie!" Of course the stubborn toddler wouldn't repeat it.
• Josie can count all of her fingers as follows, "five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, counteen" followed by various nonsense words followed by "-teen." (No, she only has ten fingers.) If she starts counting at one, she'll usually say, "one, two, four, six..." What qualm could she have with the number three?
  
• Josie likes to look at pictures and identify her friends and relatives. Her favorite and most clearly enunciated family members are her young cousins. Her only stumbling point is calling every babe in arms "Lucy."
• Josie likes to sit and "read" books to herself by pointing out objects in the illustration and recalling elements from the text. There really is no other sound more relaxing for her parents who now see the point of reading Dr. Seuss' "A, B, C's" five thousand times.
• The kid can carry a tune! Even though her rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle" goes "Tinkle, tinkle star .... Sky ... Diamond..." she fills in with nonsense words and hits all the notes.
• When driving around with Mama, she identifies her favorite places (zoo, park, Kid City, Henry's, home). This is surprising because even Josie's Grammy has trouble in this department.
  

Having a talkative toddler is so much fun. She really does say the darndest things.