Amazing Little Girl

Over the last couple of weeks, Maida has been invited to several birthday parties for her friends. Not only was she excited to go to the birthday parties, but she was honored to make cards to put with her friends' birthday gifts. One card, in particular, was my favorite. It was the card for her friend, Ryan.

She constructed this card one afternoon in the living room while I was busy in the kitchen folding some laundry. As she sat at her small table frantically coloring, cutting, and gluing, she stopped for a minute and said, "Mom, how do you spell Ryan's name?" I wasn't paying attention to exactly what she was doing but I (realizing that she had never written a letter in her life) said, "Well, it starts with a R." Shortly after that she said, "What is the second letter?" I told her that it was a Y, and then an A, and last an N. A couple of minutes later she declared that she was done with Ryan's card and this is what she brought me (the quality is bad because I had to take it with my webcam)...

She had written his name!!! I was so impressed that I almost started crying! She really, honestly, had never written a letter before this point. I kept asking her who taught her how to write letters and she just smiled proudly. Amazing! I did have to point out to her, though, that the last letter she wrote was actually an M and Ryan's name ended with an N, so she drew an N before Ryan's name just "so he knows that the N goes on his name, too." What an amazing little girl.