A week ago, Sunday, we were sitting in sacrament meeting and Bridget was busy doodling on her “draw,” when out of the blue she held it up and said, “Look, I drew an ‘M’ like Old McDonald’s.”

It was the first time she had written an “M” with the intent of making an “M” – and she was grinning from ear to ear.

The next few days she continued to practice writing her M’s. So around Thursday of last week, I decided to try and get her to write “Mom” – she already knew how to write an “O.” We sat down with some paper and crayons and I showed her how to write M-O-M and then I let her try. She did it!

But then she wanted to write “Dad” too… She got intimidated by the length of her own name though.

(Note: Since learning, she can write “Mom” on her own without me reminding her how or without seeing the word. And she can tell you what the letters are when you ask how to spell “Mom” – but only after writing it.)

Here are a few examples of her words:

After practicing a few times she wanted to just write her own letters. So she did. Then she told me what each letter was. As you can see, the letters P-V all resemble circles. This is what all of her “writing” looked like up until recently. Now some of the letters are starting to take shape.

Since she’s taken such an interest in forming letters, we decided to capitalize a bit on that. We’ve written several cards for people we know recently and have encouraged her to write their names on them. The letters aren’t always formed properly, or oriented correctly, and they aren’t always in the right order (or even in a line)… but she’s done it, and she’s practicing. And we sure are proud. She’s written “Marshall,” “Josh,” “Matt,” and “Lucy” – to name a few!

It’s great to see her take an interest in writing. I hope she continues it.

By the way… now I can tell Dave that even though she said “Dad” first, she wrote “Mom” first!! 🙂