"Look what I can do"

If you've ever watched MadTV and had the pleasure of laughing your buns off at "Stewart" then you know what I mean when I say "Look what I can do".  While Josie doesn't actually say this (yet, wink) - I gotta say I've thought it many, many, many times.

Here are some of Josie's new "skills":

• She can spell her name.
• She recognizes all the uppercase & lowercase letters.
  
• She knows about half of the sounds that the letters make (because at some point it occurred to me that if a toddler can remember that a cow says "moo" they should be able to remember that a b says "buh").
• She can count to 20.
• She recognizes a bunch of words. (The first word she recognized was "zoo".  She started pointing it out in books to us.  Then, when she looked at the word "school" and said "two o's just like "zoo" we decided it wasn't a fluke. So, since then we've been teaching her to read lots of other words - like cat, dog, mommy, daddy, etc and short words like up, to, etc. She also recognizes her name.)
• She speaks in complete sentences and puts sentences together to tell "stories" and recall events. She also asks lots of questions.  For example... "Mama, what was that noise yesterday in my room"?  ("What noise?") "It was loud, then the lights came on and the fireman was coming. And daddy opened the window to let the smoke out...." ("Oh! That was called a fire alarm.")  Sidebar: Yea - we set off the fire alarm. Oops.
• She can put on her own shoes and socks. She can also put on her own pants and shirts - as long as putting them on backwards counts. 
• She has spent the past several days wearing panties. And to borrow from my friend Ali, I'd say we're still in the "potty practice" phase and not yet "potty training."  We've had some big successes and a few setbacks, but we're getting there. Like most other things, we're letting her lead the way. It takes a little longer when you don't use stickers, candy, etc. but years of experience teaching second graders taught me lots of valuable lessons about the negative side of using rewards.
  
• She loves lining things up, sorting, etc.  For example, she lines up her toys in long lines from smallest to biggest, groups similar things into piles, etc. 
• She sings constantly. My favorite is when she randomly busts out songs from the Musikgarten classes she took as an infant (seriously, how does she remember them) and when she enthusiastically belts out Bob Marley or Toots & the Maytals lyrics. ;)
• She is starting to draw, color, and paint with more intention and precision. She doesn't just scribble randomly anymore. She can draw clear circles and attempts other shapes, animals, etc.
• She has a very active imagination and has started to play more by herself putting her imagination to work. This usually involves her dolls and/or her dollhouse but using other things, too.
• While her toddler-negotiation skills are definitely in full working order (i.e. "But I do want to eat a lollipop, right now"), we're pleased to report that she is a lovely, patient, calm two-year old 99% of the time.  She's very good at communicating what she wants and needs, which definitely helps. At the risk of totally jinxing myself, we're officially two months into two-years old without a single tantrum.
  

In other news, we have decided to pull her out of school for awhile. The combination of 6 hours a week in the car to get her there back plus week six of an ear infection that needs to heal to prevent getting tubes plus Carissa's soccer season ending so she has full availability again plus me taking on a second job doing adjunct work for UC again and then getting bumped up to full-time at my research consulting job equals Josie back with Carissa full-time.  It was not an easy decision (are any of them easy), but we are confident it is the right decision for our family.