ABCs

The other day Giovanni had scaled a chair on his own and was sitting at the table studying the cover of one of his Daddy's books. He was slapping and prodding the book shouting, "Tee! Tee! Tee! Tee!" I decided to investigate what he was doing and as I approached him I was surprised to find that he was pointing to each letter "T" on the cover of the book and shouting, gleefully, "T!" And these were lowercase letters.

It's not uncommon for Giovanni to hunt for letters, his first and favorite letter is "O." I remember one time at the grocery store he was pointing out "O's" everywhere. Then we stopped underneath a great, big "Sea Food" sign high above us pointing and saying "Oh! Oh!" A little old lady stopped and watched us curiously and finally asked what we were doing, when I told her he loved finding the letter "O" she looked as though she didn't believe me.

Giovanni's next letter surprisingly enough was "W," which he calls, "Double." Then came "B," "Q" and "R" and sometimes "A." I say sometimes because he doesn't always recognize it and even the later four letters can sometimes be elusive to him.

We started learning letters from a simple ABC board book, at first we were only learning the name of the thing that began with with the letter pictured next to the brightly colored lower and upper case letters. Then one day he pointed to the letter "O" and said, "Dis?" (meaning: What's this?) So I signed and said "O." We only learn the ABCs when Giovanni shows interest, which is why I was so surprised to find him pointing to each letter "T" on the book because that was a letter we had never spent much time on.

Today as we looked over his alphabet book in church he pointed to the "V" and said, "Vacuum." Well in this book there is a picture of a violin next to "V" not a vacuum but in a ABC flipchart we have there is a vulture vacuuming and the picture is in the shape of a letter "V." It is the most requested page at the moment as he is obsessed with vacuums. When I vacuum the living room Giovanni pushes a small red dirt devil right beside me. He also enjoys, sweeping, wiping, scrubbing and cooking, and insists on being included when ever I am doing any of these chores. His dad thinks he's a little OCD but I think it's adorable. He freaks out when he gets too messy or dirty or wet and we have to wipe him up quick, but isn't cleanliness next to godliness?