Friday, May 23, 2008

Careful, your genius is showing

Driving home from work we pass several horse farms. This is crazy to me. When I was growing up and living right outside the big city, we used to drive far away to see any kind of open space. Looking back, it wasn't that far. But when you’re a kid if you're in a car for more than 10 minutes it's far away. Now that I live in the sticks, I still find it fascinating that we pass horses, cows, sheep and even llamas during my 15 minute drive into work.


Sophia is terrible in the car, she always has been, so I often resort to pointing to things out the window as a distraction for her, like trees, flowers, horseys, baas (sheep. Don't ask, it's a Sophia and Daddy thing), big trucks, school buses and anything else I think might grab her attention long enough to stop her whining about being stuck in her car seat.

While driving home from work yesterday, I pointed to the horses grazing in this totally huge farm we pass every day. There are usually five or six beautiful horses hanging close enough to the road for Sophia to see them. Every day as we drive past, she says, "Hi, horseys." It's cute, but yesterday it was genius. As we were passing the horses, I pointed them out to Sophia. This is our exact exchange. I swear..

"Horseys, Mommy."

"Yup, Soph. There are the horseys."

"Horseys eat, Mommy."

"Yes, the horseys are eating dinner."

"Horseys eat grass."

She's only 22 months old. Her power of deduction is unbelievable. I never told her horses eat grass. In fact, I don't know what they eat; I'm assuming here that they eat at least some grass. She made this conclusion all on her own. Freaking amazing.

But wait, there's more.

We tried to have a calm, cool and collected dinner last night hoping that we could get her to swallow at least a couple bits of food. I made her absolute favorite, macaroni and cheese (because she asked for it) and vegetarian chicken patties (because it's at least some protein). These are two things I know she has eaten in their entirety in the past, which made me hopeful she'd eat at least some of it. She must have been hungry because she ate about half the mac and cheese and two bits of the chick patty. But here is the crazy part: My husband came home in the middle of dinner, went to the refrigerator and grabbed the rolls, bologna, cheese and mustard, and brought them all to the table to makes himself a sandwich.

Sophia, sitting across the table from Jon, happily munched her mac and cheese until Daddy started eating. This is when she started her yelling to get up. Instead of fighting with her, we just took her out of the booster seat and went about eating our dinner. Sophia then sat herself on an empty chair, took a roll out of the package and tore it apart to make herself a sandwich. She grabbed a slice of bologna and put it on the bread. Next, she took a slice of cheese and placed it neatly on top of the bologna. Finally, she asked Jon to spread mustard on her sandwich, which he did only after he was able to jolt himself out of his chair after being stunned by his daughter's sheer genius.
She then put the top of roll on the top of her sandwich and took a big bite.

My daughter made her very first sandwich — and ate it — before she's even 2. She made the sandwich by copying the exact steps Jon did to make his own sandwich.

Un-freaking-believable.

Ever since the sleepover party, her verbal skills, which in my opinion are extraordinary, have quadrupled. She's speaking in full sentences, using words like IS, ARE, HER, I, YOU, it's crazy. And now she's drawing conclusions and making sandwiches. Jon said those tweens probably treated and talked to Sophia like a peer for a whole day, so she picked up a lot from them.

Great. Now I have a genius almost 2-year-old who thinks she's a teenager.
But, let's not forget that is is not even 2 ...

1 comments:

Holly said...

Well I say if she can make her own sandwich, that lets you off the hook. ;)

Seriously, wow! That's great.