A-bet! Chicago!

I love how toddlers say the first and last syllable of long words.  It's cute.  It can be tricky.  Some words are easier than others (boon for balloon is easy), so a-bet is alphabet. 

We sing the alphabet every night... have since we started trying to sleep train (so since 5 months).  I do a medley of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star / Bah Bah Black Sheep / ABC's / Made-up song about Jocelyn.  And there are a few YouTube videos we watch frequently, one where Elmo sings the ABC's with India Arie and another where Abby sings it with some little girl.  So there is a whole lot of alphabetting going on.  I suspect that they also sing it at daycare.  They do a whole lot of singing there. 

Anyway, we got in the car after daycare and the trip did NOT start with the typical request for Old McDonald (EIEIO!  Pig!).  Instead she started reciting the alphabet.  I didn't recognize it at first, since she has no real concept of melody yet.  But sure enough, A B C D E F G H I J K babble babble S T U V babble babble Next Time Sing With Me.  She is 22 months old.  This is awesome.

Yesterday she asked me to sing Bah Bah Black Sheep to her.  Today she recited it to me!  Totally unprompted at that.  She just busted it out.  She misses a few words, and only gets 2/3 of the way through it.  But it was instantly recognizable. 

And then, while she was talking herself to sleep, she started talking about how Daddy is in Chicago.  Now, he's not.  He's in Lynchburg, VA.  But last month he had to take a work trip to Chicago.  So when she would ask for him, I would tell her that Daddy went on an airplane to go to work in Chicago.  This time I didn't tell her where Daddy went, just that he went on an airplane to go to work.  She deduced that he must be in Chicago again.