Whoops

There have been plenty of exciting things going on here and I have failed to record any of them. This is a shame because I feel like there will be things about Sally I will forget, funny little moments I won't remember in future unless I write them down. So new resolve now: get it down on here before it passes forever!

She is doing really well. Her word count is well up - must be way over 200 by now. Most things she says are two and three word sentences now, and occasionally longer. She tends not to use conversation, however, which worries me slightly - instead she talks more recitatively about books and rhymes from the television. She remains obsessed by Camberwick Green and Trumpton (her conversation about Dr Mopp has become almost a verbal tic, a habit I'm trying to break) and repeats the Trumpton Clock rhyme all the time too. My plan is to continue to try and take her out more and to encourage her to talk about things we've seen and done, to try and introduce more real life into her conversation.

Her memory remains extraordinary. Over the past few weeks, ever since she went to Focus and asked us what the things were on the trolley (FOCUS) she has been working on learning her letters. Little effort has been made by us, to be honest I'd have been happy if she'd left this until she went to pre-school, but we bought her an alphabet puzzle and she has asked us and repeated letters back to us religiously. She's been bringing us her magnetic drawing board and saying 'letters please' so we draw different ones and she guesses what they are. This week, three weeks after she first asked, it was clear that she had learned the lot. She already knew the digits 1-9 (when we went to a wedding a few weeks ago she kept pointing at the doors in the hotel and telling us the room numbers) so she is now pretty well equipped when it comes to symbols. She has also learned to count to fifty with a reasonable level of reliability. Most amazingly for me she has learned virtually every book she owns off by heart. She will recite (without the books) the whole of The Bad-Tempered Ladybird or the Gruffalo, sentence by sentence, almost every word, provided you repeat each sentence as she does it. The funniest moments are her impression of the bad ladybird ("Ull sho wu!") and her gruff Gruffalo voice.

She is resolutely average when it comes to physical activities, which is fine. I had worried she was a bit behind but after asking around it seems it's perfectly normal for under-twos to still need help using cutlery. She has been finding it difficult to put puzzle pieces in but that is slowly improving, so her hand eye co-ordination is getting better, and the fact that she doesn't throw or jump is not yet unusual. I am torn at the moment on how to proceed - do you make a child focus on their weaker areas in order to help them get better, or do you leave them to figure those out for themselves and encourage them in their strengths and interests? I do worry that Sally is too self-absorbed and bookish - particularly after last week, when she demonstrated a strong fear of other children coming too close to her and trying to engage her - but if it is traumatic and upsetting to force her into those situations, then how does that improve it? I definitely need to work on her socialisation - watch this space perhaps and see how it goes.

She continues to go to Tiny Talk, now on Mondays, and now a toddler class. This is ideal as it is much wordier and more physical. It's a small class but there are children there for her to mix with, and she feels comfortable. On Thursdays we still go to soft play at the leisure centre and she has really been improving what she's doing there. She spends a lot longer playing now before she starts asking to go home, and a few sessions ago she spent the whole time climbing along the monkey bridge using hands and feet, which was a real breakthrough. There she does tolerate the other children but she doesn't like it if they come too close.

The only other thing to report is that based on the way things have been going, the terrible twos are just around the corner... Naughty step, here we come.