The Answer's Right Under Your...

Erma and I have an established morning routine.

1. Dance in the crib.
2. Get her diaper changed.
3. Drink her morning bottle of milk.
4. Read a book.

This has been the drill for a couple of months. Like clockwork, 1,2,3,4. However, the other day, Erma decided to add an extra wrinkle to step four. Normally, Erma points to the characters and I say their names. This time, Erma would point to the characters and name some body part i.e. nose, ear mouth, ect. I was elated to see Erma showing initiative and directing our course through the First look and find Elmo & Friends book.  She started with the Count, Big Bird, and Ernie. She was on a roll!  She'd point, say, and I'd confirm with a 'good girl' or an enthusiastic 'that's right'!  she was so confident until she started to call the part before she pointed-- a true show off just like her father.  As she worked across the page I could a dilemma approaching.  She had begun focusing oh the characters noses and was approaching the noseless, earless cookie monster fast.
Her hand was already halfway extended when she was confronted by the bulging eyes and gaping, toothless maw of our blue antagonist.  She paused, the 'N' sound just warming on her lips faded as she seemingly drifted in to contemplation of cookie's proboscis problem. I gave her a moment to figure it out for her self before I'd decide to name some other feature like the eyes or mouth.  Time was up.  I prompted her with 'Who's that?' a prompt I use often to navigate see and say books with her.  With a tilt of the head and a little shrug, she pinched her fingers together between cookie monster's eyes and says 'nose!' declaring the missing nose found. 

Although I came away with a laugh from that little exchange, I think i'm going to find Erma a book with more complete faces asst least until she's a bit older.