I have long suspected that Ava 'reads' from right to left. This was confirmed yesterday as we approached a stop sign, and she said "look, Mom! A STOP SIGN! P...O...T...S...STOP!" With a lot of praise I said, "That's right, S..T..O..P, stop!" But sometimes she follows along while I am reading books with her finger, tracing from left to right. I suppose it will fall into place in good time.

To carry on with the reading writing arithmetic theme, we were working our way through 9 bites of a sandwich, and had managed to whittle it down to 5. At this point I said to her, "you have 5 pieces left. If you eat this one, how many will you have?" (note that she could not see her plate). She looked at me, turned her hands up in the air, cocked her head to the side and said "FOUR!" I swear to god, I fell to my knees while practically shouting "THAT'S RIGHT!" and enveloped her in a bear hug.

Now, I am not constantly drilling my daughter on her letters and numbers, and please do not think that I am cracking the whip while screaming COUNT! But every once in a while, I throw one of these questions in, just to see where she stands. She has been able to add to and take away from quantities up to 3 or maybe 4, but after that, quantity tends to merge into one big blob of a lot. 6 bites looks like 8 bites, which looks like 12 bites, and so on. Compare 6 to 20, and she is obviously able to discern the difference, but it is more in terms of more and less, and not 20 and 6. So, it was really neat to see her apply adding and taking away to larger blobs.