Bad Blogger, NO BISCUIT!

Summertime = relaxed schedules = no babysitter (other than Grandma of course) = drastically reduced computer time. Hence lack of posting lately. That, plus the back-to-back family reunions last month and subsequent exhaustion. Last week I said to Terry, "I MUST get some work done soon," so we arranged a schedule that gave me 3 afternoons this week to work. And I made enough progress to feel ok about taking time to download pictures from the past three or four weeks, I'm not sure exactly how long... but...

V. IS WALKING!

Yes! Full-on walking! July 27, she took off after a book and never looked back.

Also... she RECOGNIZES LETTERS. My baby may be a late walker, but I reckon she'll be an early reader. We were playing with alphabet blocks, and suddenly something clicked in her little head and she said "A!" From that moment forward she consistently and 98% of the time correctly identifies all writing as "A." Granted, she's not actually reading, but she recognizes this abstraction known as the "alphabet" as a visual pattern, and it has a name: A. She gets a huge kick (probably because of the lavish praise we give her when she does it) out of identifying letters everywhere we go - on storefront posters, road signs, T-shirts, stickers, and of course books. She loves to watch the youtube video of Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing the "African Alphabet" song (she points to the laptop and says, what else? "A"). Occasionally she will mis-identify something as "A" that is not a letter - e.g. a diamond pattern on a toy she has, or the picture of a lightning bolt in a book. But pretty nearly all the time she is right.

So here I offer pictures of the walking baby, taking off after her alphabet book: