counting

Elijah has recently learned to count, and now we count everything: fingers, toes, teddy grahams, number of spoonfuls of yogurt in a container, cheerios in a bowl (believe me, there are many!) , spoonfuls of rice on a plate, eyes, ears, rubber ducks (there are two), you name it.

Now when Elijah decides to be a picky eater, all we need to do is start counting whatever is on his plate, and he opens his mouth for spoonful after spoonful of the food he had nearly rejected. It's been a nice side effect of his counting obsession, although it is starting to wear out a little.

Another side effect is that he instantly falls in love with almost any counting book that he comes across.

The coolest thing is that he counts in both Russian and English, depending on who's currently interacting with him. And he doesn't mix the two languages. If he starts in Russian, he'll keep going in Russian till the end. But Russian numbers can be tricky. It's not just one word for one number like it is in English, but two: one for feminine objects and one for masculine (plus one for neuter, but I try not to complicate the issue too much.) To make matters worse, this only applies up to a certain number, after which the numbers are the same for all genders, but the case (i.e. the ending) of the object changes. For the longest time Elijah insisted on counting all objects using masculine form only, but we have finally had a breakthrough a couple days ago. He still prefers to say "odin" (meaning "one") instead of "odna," but every once in a while he'll use the correct gender with a little sly smile on his face, before reverting back to the masculine, "OK, odin!"

He can count solidly till 10, sometimes 12, and we are starting to introduce numbers up to 20.