Friday, January 20, 2012

Meanwhile, Back in KaycieLand...

I haven't mentioned a whole lot about what K is up to over the past couple of weeks. I've been a bit distracted. Let me take a moment here to point out a couple of things.

She hasn't done well with all the craziness of the past week. She's hanging in there, but her schedule's off and she's had grandparents here a lot. Greg has been home, which is weird for her, but we were gone for three days at the hospital and since then we've been coming and going a lot. This is not part of our normal routine, to say the least. She had gotten to where she loved going to school and would basically kick me out of the classroom if I stopped to chat with her teacher when I dropped her off. The past couple of weeks she hasn't wanted to go and this morning she actually cried and clung to me for dear life (which, of course, set me off as well). Hopefully we'll be able to get her back into some type of routine and provide a little more consistent environment over the next few weeks. She needs it.

Meanwhile, she's starting to scare us a little with her crazy intelligence. I can't speak to what two year olds are supposed to do, but she seems to be making some pretty big leaps with her abilities. In addition to figuring out that she can climb just about anything, including the wall, she has suddenly started coloring in a more focused manner (scribbling over individual objects instead of just across the entire page) and drawing "people." I wouldn't have known they were people if she hadn't pointed to them and told me they were Mamaw and Papaw. She's also started asking to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - but requesting specific episodes. And the kicker - she can use our Android tablet. Things we never taught her, like how to turn on the video player and watch MMC. I downloaded a few toddler games for her a few weeks ago but she's had trouble playing some of them, like the letter puzzles. Then one day this past week she started doing them with very little trouble at all. Now she can find the aps, start them, select which game she wants, and play them. Then she'll exit it and turn on a tv show. Seriously. I'm a little freaked out by this. Partially because it seems weird to let her use our phones and tablet, but she's pretty careful with them and I figure in her world using electronic devices is a skill she's going to need early on anyway.

I read a thing in Parenting Magazine the other night that said the average two year old should be able to make simple two word sentences. Ummm. My kid is making 5+ word sentences and combining them into conversations. She's very opinionated and likes to share those opinions verbally. She's also learning multiple-syllable words. Like chandelier. She learned that one in the lobby at the hospital. She also remembers songs, loves to sing them, and sometimes makes up her own songs and dances. And did I mention she's reading books to me? She can look through several of her favorite books and recite them to me, especially if they are rhyming books. The magazine also said she should be able to count up to three objects. She can get to ten, and sometimes higher although she tends to stall around 14.  One of the toddler games she likes is connect the dots, and she can complete the ones with up to 23 dots. 

This afternoon she had been playing puzzle games on my phone and apparently figured out how to send a text to my dad and emailed Greg...

And in the time it's taken me to type this she's taught herself how to adjust the volume on the videos on the tablet and downloaded two games from the market. Sigh. Hope they were free!

Anybody out there with a two year old know if this kind of stuff is normal? I really don't know...


2 comments:

Allison said...

I think it's totally safe to say that Kaycie is extremely intelligent. I'm telling you - reading to kids makes a HUGE difference in especially their verbal skills. Mini-me was always WAYYYY ahead verbally and I absolutely attribute that to exposing her to a lot of language through reading.

As for the electronics, I say the earlier they learn, the better - that way they can help us!

Susan said...

I told my dad on Saturday that I had two fears - first, that at any given time I knew she could be smarter than me in the next 30 minutes and second, at this point it wasn't clear if she'd use her powers for good or evil... HA!