I clicked a link for MontessoriMom.com on a message board I frequent. The link was for a "quiz" for mothers of young children, to help determine your child's talents.
I almost giggled as I answered a few questions, as I couldn't believe how much some of the answers described my DD (who just turned 3 yesterday).
Anyway, I was not surprised when I received this response after submitting the questionnaire:
My Child's Talent is Language
Your child has exceptional linguistic ability. Your child could be the next president. Also, your child may be the next Dale Carnegie, Dr. Suess, or JK Rowland.
Your child can hear things and remember them easily. They are often advanced readers and learn to talk quickly. They enjoy telling stories. They learn other languages easily. They can generalize how their language is put together in written and spoken form readily.
Some good activities for your child are as follows:
Word games such as scrabble, crossword puzzles, anagrams, spelling games and most of all, reading.
Your child will probably start writing at a young age, so have plenty of pencils, crayons, and paper handy.
My little darling sure is a verbal little thing - very articulate and well-spoken, and loves to talk and sing and interact (just like her mama). So these results were not at all surprising to me, and describe her very accurately. :-)
She really is a smart little booger. And very impressive in her verbal skills, and her vocabulary. :-)
LOL. I know it's early. We usually do it right after Thanksgiving. But we're only a week early.
DH didn't want to wait until Thanksgiving, since we're always so busy. And we knew DD would love it (she's soon to be 3). She saw some Christmas lights down the street this week and started asking to put up the tree. We had already been thinking about doing it this week, so we went ahead.
So...we got into the Christmas spirit and decorated early. NOW I'm REALLY in the Christmas spirit. We even have 3 wrapped gifts under the tree ![[Big Grin]](http://www.raisinggodlytomatoes.com/ubb/biggrin.gif)
Well, last night I stayed up and cut out and baked all the Christmas cookies. There were probably about 3 dozen or so. They turned out really well. I'll have to post my recipe later.
This morning my just-turned-2-year-old DD and I decorated the cookies. First we turned on the Christmas music and danced around for a while. 
Then I made up 2 batches of frosting, and made it in white, red, green, and yellow. We had a lot of fun decorating the cookies. DD mostly had fun eating them and playing with the sprinkles! (Why, oh why, did I get out the sprinkles?!? 
) He, he! She dumped them out EVERYWHERE, and then even tried to dump them over her head!! Oh, my! She said she had fun decorating the cookies. She actually decorated a few herself. She tried to paint the frosting on, but that didn't work so well. So I frosted and she put sprinkles on.
DH came in a cracked up! :-) He said, when I left, we had a clean home! LOL! It took me 20 minutes to clean up the mess when we got done. But we had fun making the mess. And our cookies look better than I thought they would. Decorating is sooo not my thing. I have a really good friend who is great at stuff like that. She makes the most beautiful cakes and cookies you've ever seen! I don't care enough to work that hard. :rolleyes:
So, it got wild and crazy in my dining room today, but DD and I had a blast decorating our cookies together. She's gonna have even more fun eating them when she gets up from her nap. :-)
My DD is so smart. She learns things so quickly, that often we don't even know she has picked up on something until we hear her talking about it.
Yesterday we were in the return line at Walmart. Tessa started saying "14! I see 14!" So I turned around to see what she was looking at, and there was line #14, with the number lit up, right behind us! (DD just turned 2.) I didn't know she could recognize a number like 14 (I have to attribute that to Sesame Street, as I haven't worked with her on numbers that high other than counting.). It is so exciting to me when she learns something and then can apply it.
About two or three months ago we went to visit someone in the hospital. We had to park in the parking garage. As we were driving around and around looking for a parking spot, DD started saying, "Mommy, we're going around and around - 'round and 'round in circles!!" I thought that was extremely perceptive for someone her age, because she wasn't looking at anything that was a clear-cut circle.
She is very sharp, and her memory is incredible. She is also very observant. She will spot a tiny little airplane up in the sky at night, when its lights are barely perceptible. She is always observing the world around her. Of course, this can make her a bit of a slow-poke, but that's okay. I love that she's learning and enjoying the world around her.
I am thankful that I have a SIL and also a friend who shared with me before DD was born that the best way to teach kids is to always be talking to them and telling them what things are, what color they are, what shape, etc., rather than doing formal "teaching" when they're young. They both have extremely bright kids, so I knew that they knew what they were talking about. That is all I do with my DD, and she is extremely bright. I get comments all the time from friends, relatives, and people we see in the store. Children are just little sponges, and they will soak up whatever you teach them. So I always make sure that I'm explaining something to her. DH does too. And it is so fun to watch her learn. :-)
Last weekend I got to go to the Nutcracker ballet with my mom and my MIL. It was so much fun. We went to the matinee, which meant we didn't have to dress up as much, although everyone still looked really nice.
I have wanted to go to this ballet for about 10 years now, but I never thought I'd get to go. I ended up getting to do this as part of my Christmas.
The ballet was beautiful. I've never been to anything like this before. We had pretty good seats, although a few times I wished that I had remembered my binoculars so I could get a close-up. I don't know which part I liked best. I definitely liked the prince and the ballerina dancing in the snow scene, and I also liked the dancers in the sugar plum part.
It was just beautiful, and quite an experience. I hope I get to go again someday. We talked about maybe taking DD in a few years when she is old enough to sit still that long. :-)
I always wonder what it would be like to make a living in entertainment. I think it would be so awesome to be able to dance or sing and make a living off of it. (Of course, I do realize that it is a very difficult, competitive line of work, and probably quite stressful. Those of us who don't have the talent for this sort of thing probably tend to glorify or fantasize a little bit about what it must be like.)
Anyway, it was great fun to escape from reality for a couple of hours to watch the ballet. WELL worth my time and money. :-)