Counting ...

It is especially funny to watch and listen to kids when they are learning how to count. My boy was just in the potty and (HOORAY!) was following it up with the handwashing! (He must have read my blog.) Mom told him he needed to count to thirty while washing, and he was right on track: " ..., eleven, twelve, thirteen, fortyteen, fiftyteen, sixteen, ..." I think they hear things and try their best to put them together. He had already told me today that the number that comes after twenty nine was twenty ten ... in fact, we had a rather long conversation about it where I was repeatedly told I was wrong, and I have since accepted that. So, I'm sitting at the dinner table enjoying listening to him count. I start to laugh to myself in anticipation of "twenty ten," when my wife wonders aloud what is wrong with me. I told her to just listen to the numbers as they flow forth. And here they come, "twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine" and then comes the best "twenty ten." I chuckled to myself because it just sounded so funny. There was emphasis in his voice, vigor, even a rather boisterous sense of accomplishment. Little did I know that he wasn't done yet. As my glee quickly subsided, he yells out "THIRTY!" I don't know if he remembered our conversation earlier in the day and had decided that when you count to thirty that you should actually get there, or if he had always known that the numbers go twenty nine, twenty ten, thirty. At any rate, I was pretty-much on the floor when he made it back to the dinner table.