Every night, we read books with Sloan. Last night we made it through “Curious George Learns to Count from 1 to 100.” As you could probably surmise from the title, the book chronicles how George navigates from 1-100. It really is quite creative how the author transitions from number to number as George encounters different objects on his climb to 100.

We read “Curious George Learns to Count from 1 to 100” last night.

Sloan is starting to get a little obsessed with counting to 100. Out of all the books we checked out at the library this past weekend, she was really stoked about George. Although 100 excites her, she has a long way to go before she is able to chronologically reach the top of that mountain. She is still at the point where she starts to stumble after she reaches 20.

But if she is anything like her daddy, she should be counting to the century mark in about two years.

In life it is crazy the stuff we do remember and the stuff we don’t remember, especially early childhood memories. I think Forest Gump explained it best in his “It’s funny what a young man recollects” bench monologue (go watch it if you don’t know what I am talking about). There are so many things I don’t remember about being a kindergartener but I do remember when I counted to 100 for the first time.

I was in the car riding somewhere with my mom. Suddenly, I just decided to count to 100. I had never done it before, never really even practiced it. But I had my mind set on doing it…and I did. I still remember how effortless it felt. Up until that point I didn’t really even remember ever saying “70” or “80” or “90.” But for whatever reason I was able to pull those numbers out of my brain and correctly pair them with whatever second number was appropriate (70, 71, 72, 73…). I managed to pull knowledge I didn’t know I had and smoothly count to 100.

It would be cool if it just clicked for Sloan like it did for me. Here I am thinking it was kind of a phenomenon but perhaps that is how it happens for a lot of people. Do you remember when you counted to 100 for the first time? Don’t Blink.