Abigail is interested in letters. On her bedroom door, her name is spelled out in colorful paper letters that came home with her from the NICU at the hospital, and whenever she points to it, I take her over there and let her touch them. I say “That’s your name– Abigail!” Then I carefully spell it out, pointing to each letter. We’ve been doing this several times a week for at least couple months. A few days ago as we were lounging companionably together on the floor of her room, she pointed at the door and said, “A-B-eh-G-eh-eh-eh.” In response to my astonishment and delight, she did it again. Then she did it the next day for her dad. At first I thought she had simply memorized the sounds I say when I spell her name, but she has definitely made the connection to letters. Karen gave her some blocks with letters on them for her birthday, and yesterday Abi started pulling them out of the bin, saying, “B! G!” She didn’t actually find the B and the G, but she had clearly associated those shapes and the shapes on her door. The past several times I’ve read her books, she’s pointed, instead of at pictures she really likes, at the words on the pages and the numbers on the barcodes on the back. That’s one of the things I didn’t anticipate about being a mother– reading aloud strings of numbers off the backs of books. If Abi turns out to be a major geek (in the good, smart, experty sense of the term) I will someday tell her this story of How She Got Her Start. “You were definitely a fan of a good serial number as a baby!”

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