Thalia sees enough of this, and finds it amusing to stick her arms up (How big is Thalia? So Big!), so I give her little taps too, and she finds that just hilarious. High fives with her seemed inevitable.

Tonight at the dinner table I was sitting between the girls. I asked Siena to give me a high five, which she did, and then I held out my hand to Thalia and asked her to, as well. At 10.5 months, she reached out, and–most importantly–spread out her fingers, and tapped my hand! Hooray! We got her to repeat it two more times to show it wasn’t quite a fluke. In fact, Siena and Thalia gave me a high five at the same time, which was just fantastic. Makes a daddy proud.

We’ve also been working on getting to 20, but there are some problems there.

The process we took was, after she could count 1 to 10 (not counting per se so much as reciting the sounds of counting 1 to 10; this was a year ago before she understood the “counting stuff” concept), we’d have her count to 10, and then I’d say “eleven!” Eventually she would get to 10 and then automatically say eleven, too. Then I would just continue counting up to 20.

One day she counted to 10 and then kept going…

10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20!

Hmm, you missed two there, champ. Always 13 and 16, she’d skip right over. So I would try to help:

Siena: 11, 12

Daddy: 13

Siena: 15, 17, 18, 19, 20!

Ok, so she would skip 14. She maybe thought I was saying 14 and so went on to the next one as her little brain perceived it.

I never really solved the problem of 13, but at some point in the past month or so, she has started throwing it into the mix, so now she’s only leaving out 16 on her path from 1 to 20.

Maybe she’s trying to tell us that we’ll want to just skip right by her 16th year?

Her claim was Siena had, entirely unprompted and without assistance, sat in her chair during breakfast and quietly counted from one to ten.

I couldn’t believe it, and said I had to see it for myself.

Fortunately, twice more during the day she did it again. Holy cow!

Now, it seems almost certain that she doesn’t quite understand what “counting” is, a way of assigning cardinality to a set of discrete objects by naming or indicating individual objects. But, like saying the alphabet, it’s a huge step just to be able to do it, in order. I think of it kind of like helping her to walk initially: you are helping her get the muscles familiar and used to the activity, so that eventually they will work on their own properly.

Additionally, when reading a counting book, mom asked Siena, “How many X do you see?” and Siena started at one and counted up to the number on the page (and then often counted past the number, but that’s ok, because at least it’s connecting the “how many” question with the act of counting).

Being the more numerically-minded parental unit (mom is much more the language and verbal one), I had been getting a little worried that Siena might be lagging on the numbers side compared to her proficiency with the alphabet. I worry no more! (for now)

It was a pretty busy weekend, and I will try to post some pictures from our time spent at the Gore Place Sheep Shearing festival with Alexander and his parents.