A glimpse at my future?

Ryanne's not this gung ho, yet. She does BF her dolls quite a bit, though, and I did walk into the Y nursery to her feeding one of their dolls the other day.

Breastfeeding Mary

Imaginary friend

Ryanne has an imaginary friend named Josie. Josie goes pretty much everywhere with us. We are advised against sitting on her. She needs space at the table. She rides in the back of the van - I hope in a car seat, but I hesitate to ask. Sometimes Ryanne carries her, but most of the time she walks. It's very interesting to watch.

Ryanne spent all of Grandma and Bampa's visit playing with them. They took rocket ships to Target, the airport and Phoenix. Bampa sat on her computer and she had to get out her tools to fix it. They really took her to new realms in terms of the detail in her imaginary play. I don't know how I'm going to keep up or keep track.

She loves having the table cloth on the kitchen table. She now has a table house and loves to play in it. I guess we need to clean up the living room so we can make forts again.

Now she's tracing

Ryanne has been 'writing' for a while. She'll start moving the pen up and down along a line on a page and say that she's writing something.

The other day, I decided to see how ready she really was. I wrote out her name in broken lines and asked her to trace the letters.

I had to help her on the R. She didn't quite understand 'tracing'. She got it by the end of that one though. She was 'putting the lines together'.

Since then, she's asked me to write her name so she can trace it a few times. I don't know how far we are from me writing it and her copying it on another line, but I am guessing not far.

I do know one thing. She's getting a reusable (write and erase) letter tracing book for Christmas now.

Letters

Ryanne's letter and number recognition is really improving. I think I've said that I can tell what they've covered in MDO because she knows those. She's got her colors down, too, and if she gets it wrong, she's probably yanking your chain. Yes, a bit of a sense of humor developing.

The ABCs are now intact save for the L. She hears it and tries to say it, but seems to find H I J K M N O P easier. I can't blame her.

The cool thing, though, is that she's trying to write letters. She can actually write a decent A. She has formed R's and O's with objects on the ground (sticks and berries). She's written A's on paper and her magnetic board. Last week she wrote "g" and "o" and I sounded it out for her and she got all excited that it was a word.

Everywhere we go, she's pointing out "R is for Ryanne" and "3, mommy, I'm three."

She's playing with letter sounds sometimes, too. I think we're on the brink of reading readiness. I'm so not prepared for this. She's changing too quickly, and it's just amazing.

Angel

Today, Ryanne and I went to the mall to get an angel from the Salvation Army tree to adopt. We ended up picking 2, one for her and one for Corin. We made sure to pick for the correct ages.

We went first to get some clothes. They each got an outfit.

Then, we went to the Disney store because that's where RC wanted to go for a toy for her angel. Ryanne picked out the tea set that she always looks at when we're there. Then, she picked out a scarf and hat. She helped Corin get some bath toys for his angel and I got a couple of little stuffed animals for the baby boy.

We walked back to the tree to drop off the gifts. This was the hard part. We'd talked as we shopped about why we were doing this, but it didn't quite click until it was time to part with the tea set.

She was QUITE upset that we were leaving it. We went to get drinks and sit to talk. We talked about what a lucky girl she was and how she was going to get presents from Santa and family. We talked about how not all mommies and daddies could afford presents and how some kids weren't easy for Santa to find. We discussed how we could help her angel have a merry Christmas. We talked about how it was a relatively small thing for us, but would mean a lot to the little girl and boy on Christmas day. We discussed how she had 2 tea sets and maybe this girl didn't or would appreciate a new one. We discussed what she was going to ask Santa for, since she was easy to find in her house.

By the time we got to see daddy, she was talking about how she helped her angel. She said she "didn't keep the tea pot, (she) gave it to (her) angel so she could have a merry Christmas." She had that little smile that she gets when she's proud of herself for learning something new. She wasn't upset about it at all. That's my girl.

Of course, now we have to write a letter to Santa to make sure he can bring Popo-chan's hospital to her from Japan. That was what consoled her in the mall. Luckily, Santa's elves have that one taken care of.