Playing

This evening, as I was mulching the planters by the patio, Z. was playing a game where she would sit on the edge of her digging box (a raised bed that I took out of vegetable cultivation) and then after doing some lackadaisical toddler counting to get up the appropriate courage, she would half-lower herself and half-fall over backwards into it. This made her so filthy that I think those clothes will henceforth be designated garden clothes. (But it's good dirt.)

I was nearby and cheering at each tumble, but not really paying her too much attention as long as she was entertaining herself. Then I realized that this is what I was hearing:

"1..2..3..4..5..6..7..oopsie!" And over she would go.

That's right, my baby girl was counting to seven repeatedly. Counting had become half the game.

And then she got to eight.

I started encouraging her to say it again, and she was so eager to figure out what it was that she'd done that I was looking for that she got all tangled up again. So I decided to get re-involved in my mulching.

And then she did this, three times in a row before we went in for supper:

""1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10..12!"

Let's not quibble about that missing 11. As far as I know, no one has explicitly taught her her numbers. Letters, yes. Numbers, not really. She has long been fond of the sequence 6-7-8, and of course she knows 1-2-3, and recently added four. But putting it all together? Am I right to think that this is not the usual 26-month thing? I'm delighted and also a little intimidated.