Shriek and spell

This morning, I heard a shout from ThingOne upstairs. She was clearly not happy about something. Anne went upstairs to see what was wrong, and ThingOne got even sadder when she saw her. She didn't want her mum. She wanted her dad. We try not to pander to this sort of thing, so rather than call me up, Anne tried to find out what was wrong with ThingOne.

Through her sobs, Anne heard the words "strawberry", "start" and "s" (as in the letter s). Anne worked out that what ThingOne wanted was to ask me if the word strawberry starts with an S.

"Why don't you ask him over the baby monitor ThingOne?"

So, over the baby monitor we had a walkie-talkie conversation:
"Daddy, strawberry start with an s or not?".
"Yes ThingOne it does start with an s. Well done."

ThingOne was then happy.

She's doing a lot of this at the moment. She's really trying to figure out what letters words start with, and clearly as soon as she does she has to find out if she's right. This morning she wanted to check with me and I wasn't there at the time and she got frustrated.

She's fascinated by letters. She likes to spell ThingOne. A few months ago people were impressed when she saw "ThingOne" written down and would say "L-I-L-Y - ThingOne!" If she stopped there she was fine, but she gave the game away if she attempted it with another word:
"D-A-D-D-Y - ThingOne!"

Now she's progressed a bit. She now thinks Daddy is spelt D-I-D-Y. i.e. ThingOne with the Ls replaced with Ds. You can see the connections being made in her brain.

Oddly, she thinks tummy is spelt Didl. She keeps pointing at her tummy and shouting "D-I-D-L - Tummy!" No idea where that one came from, but in our house the word tummy has now been replaced with didl. e.g. my didl is full, or I have didl ache. Let's hope we don't turn her into Nell.

Strange, funny little girl.