Andrea keeps amazing us with all the things she is learning and saying. It’s nuts. For example…

• One of her favorite shows is an episode of Go, Diego, Go! about a hippo and his friend, an oxpecker, and she loves to talk all about it. She will tell you that the hippo-pot-a-mus’s friend is an oxpecker. And if you ask what kind of friend, she tells you “symbionic” (I’m serious!) and if you ask why, she says “eat the bugs” (oxpeckers eat the bugs off hippo’s backs). She also learned the Spanish word for taller from this episode — “mas alto” — which she loves saying.
• She also likes to say other things in Spanish, including “Hola, I’m Annie!” (her nickname for herself) and “Gracias” (which she uses in context). When I asked her what Gracias meant, she said “Spanish”.
• She loves counting and often asks “How many?” followed by “Count ’em!” and then “one – two – three…” She can count all the way to 8 regularly, but usually loses track when counting actual items after 3 or 4.
• She is obsessed with letters and recognizes them everywhere, even upside down, backwards, and even shapes that look like letters. She took two bites side-by-side out of a cheese quesadilla last week and held it up and said “W”!
• She also has a sense of humor. When she is working on her puzzles or identifying letters, she likes to tease us by pretending to get it wrong. Like she’ll pick up a puzzle piece, point to where it goes (correctly), then try to put it somewhere else and say “Noooo…” and then giggle, before putting it in the right place. Or when she sees letters that are similar, she will say what it’s not, like if she sees an R, she’ll drag out “Nooooooot a P…” before telling us it’s an R.
• She’s also figuring out that letters spell words, and starting to recognize words. When she sees words that start with A, she says “Andrea!” This weekend she went for a walk in the neighborhood with Paul and when they got to the end of our street, she pointed at the stop sign, said “T” and then said “Stop!”
• She’s also great with names. She knows her first and last name, the names of her friends and her teachers at school, most of our relatives, and our friends. She even knows who goes with who, in the case of spouses, kids, and even pets. It’s pretty crazy.

Andrea recently turned 21 months and her brain seems to just be exploding. She is saying so many new things every day, and learning so much!

She has recently discovered Mickey Mouse and now loves watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. (She also is still crazy about Clifford, Curious George, Dora, and Diego).

She is learning her letters, and can identify at least half of the alphabet. She seems especially fond of the letters A, E, O, U, and X. She can even tell you that X is for “xylophone”!

She also started learning her numbers and woke up from her nap yesterday suddenly able to count from 1 to 8!

She knows a ton of words, and is starting to put them together. Some of my favorite things she says are…

• “excited!”
• “here go!”
• “got it!” (when playing ball)
• “me!” (means “take me”)
• “I know…” (when I have to wipe her nose or do something that she doesn’t like, I say “I know, I know” in a sympathetic way, so now she says it whenever she’s upset)
• “OOP!” (aka, “oops!”)

She’s also talks a lot about things that are “hiding”. She’ll say we need to “find it” and says “Arrrreeee yoooouuuu?” while looking for it. And she often says “peek-a-boo!” when it’s found.