I could hardly believe it when Carrie started filling words in for me while we read our bedtime stories earlier. I’m sure it’s just that she’s memorized the books we read frequently, not that she’s reading them. But I do think she can recognize the word “Dog”. I suppose this shouldn’t be so surprising to me, since about 90% of her books have the word “Dog” in them at least once. In fact, her current favorite book at bedtime is Sleepy Dog: “Turn on the moon. Turn off the light. Sleepy, sleepy, sweet dreams tonight.”
It’s not like I’m pressuring her to do anything with letters or reading. She just starts randomly reciting the alphabet (when she’s not counting her toes) and points to letters and says their names. I’m assuming that someday she’ll acknowledge the existence of “M” and “N”. She recognizes the written letters and will say their names, but when we say the alphabet her version goes something like “J”, “K”, “L”, “O”, “O”, “O”, “P”. I guess it’s similar to the “ella-mennow” thing, maybe she thinks it’s “L and O, O”. And as far as I can tell, she recognizes finger-spelled letters at least as accurately as written letters. Which is much better than I can do!