First Hymn

A few months ago I sang "In the Garden" to Amelia for the first time in a long time. She really, really liked it and would request it. Then a few weeks ago I heard her reciting bits and pieces of it. Last week she recited the two verses I sing, word for word, more than once. Amazing.

Her daddy has been gone on a mini-vacation the past four days and several times on the phone she will recite the hymn to him (sorry, couldn't resist). The funny thing was she inserted "daddy" where "he" and "him" belong. I told him that like most little girls, her Daddy and God are pretty interchangeable, and he should be pretty impressed that she's already made that connection. (I used to think my dad was God because he knew everything ... it took me an undisclosed number of years to discover that if he didn't know the answer, he just made one up.)

Amelia doesn't sing - all the songs she knows and loves like "Ring Around the Rosey", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and a handful of others are all recited. I don't know if (a) this is normal, (b) the fact that I'm not the world's best singer is to blame or (c) she has Papa's tone deaf gene. Hmmmmm.

[picture dated 7/19/08]