Tech Savvy

Annie's been pounding away on the keyboard and clicking the mouse all willy-nilly for over a year now. But it was only a few weeks ago when I watched in surprise and awe as she grabbed the mouse, clicked an okay button and closed a pesky pop up menu that had come up while she was watching a movie on my computer. When did she learn to do that? When did she get so capable and accurate? Boggled my mind. We just barely convinced my Grandpa to hook up a mouse to his PC. And he still just uses key commands to play solitaire.

Annie is becoming frighteningly proficient on the internet though. She whips through the pbskids.org website with reckless abandon (usually leaving nearly all the images saved to my desktop since she tends to click and drag a lot), switching from one "Dragon Tales" game to another. She'll play "Memory" on the "Jakers" part of the website all by herself on the 4, 6 & 8 card levels ("Look Mommy, I matched two mean old goats! I a genius!"), usually in even less turns than I'd take, since the kid seems to have the unnatural ability to make matches she's never seen before. On the 12, 16 & 20 card levels, I have to stick close by, or being playing with her, but those first three levels buy me at least 5-10 minutes uninterrupted Ellie time.

What scares me is when she tries to 'email' people. "Look, I email Grandma," she tells me as I come in and random windows, including System Preferences, are pulled up and she's pounding away on the keyboard. I think 'email' time is anytime she 'loses' the internet or her movie and just randomly pokes around my computer, pulling up and deleting stuff. (All the folders on my desktop are now locked, since the first time she accidently threw all of our family photos in the trash.) But, so far I've seen no evidence of her any chatting with 30-year old drummers, so we'll keep the computer for now.