She found 5!

For the longest time, Lauren was skipping 5 and 6 when she was counting to 10. Whether she was counting objects or just from memory, she would always go straight through from 4 to 7 and keep on going. It was cute, but also a little strange. I mean, she could count all the way up to 20, which is pretty awesome for a 2 1/2 year old, but then would leave out those two numbers. Then, all of a sudden a couple weekends ago, Lauren magically started saying 5 and 6! I'm not sure what precipitated that, but suddenly there they were!

It's funny too, because right around that same time her colors suddenly clicked. She must have had a brain wave weekend. For the last 6 months at least we were really working with her to get her colors down and they just weren't sticking for some reason. It was almost laughable how bad she was at them; she would shout the most random color names for things. Actually, it would have been funny if we weren't so worried that she was color blind. It was that bad.

But then, just like the numbers, the colors just seemed to click. It was like one morning she woke up and totally understood the concept. She's still a little shaky with it sometimes, especially with the colors that have many different hues like blue and green, but for the most part, she's spot on. She's really accurate with red, pink, orange and brown and is hit-and-miss with yellow. Purple isn't there at all, but I'm sure it's coming. I'm just relieved she finally got it!

She was really being cute this weekend and said some funny and smart things:

- She was eating lunch in the kitchen and I was up there keeping her company. I was sitting on the counter when she looked up at me and said, "What'cha doing up there?" It was so cute.

- She suddenly has a whole bunch of new verbs. She told me this weekend that she "ripped" a piece of paper (which she in fact did) and this morning told me someone was carrying a bag. Both are things I've never heard her say.

- On that same note, she was narrating the actions of our cat, Thomas, on Sunday morning. "She's (it's a boy) sitting. She's walking. She's getting down. She's brushing. (?!?!)" He was in reality running away from her, but it was cute to hear her interpretation.

- I spent all weekend painting Jeremy's "man room" Carolina blue (hence the no posting). It really is quite blue. When I finally took her in to see what she'd been doing, she gasped, put her hands up to her eyes in a diamond shape and said, "I see it!" She looked like a photographer planning a photograph.

- Finally, the one thing Lauren has been really consistent with for a long time is shapes. She just got those really quickly, even more complex ones. This weekend I had put some short curtain rods in the family room as I moved things around. She arranged them into a perfect diamond shape and then told us what she had done. Smart girl!