She types, she clicks, she cleans!

Megan has been exposed to the computer from early on. She watches her mother use. She watches her father use it. She watches her brother use it. She watches her grandparents use it. From the time she could sit up and reach the keyboard, she wanted to get in on the game.

At 17-months old, she's developed a taste for a few particular games and has moved from mere observer to actual player. At the Sesame Street web site and the Fisher Price web site, for example, there are games that require only a keystroke to trigger the next action. She knows this and she complies - pressing the space bar or a letter key not to hard but not to soft.

There are other games that require some point and click to move the game ahead. She can seem to point but does not have the control to click. We help her out instead. Today we played an animal sounds game featuring her beloved Little People. Two animals, one sound. She has to decide which animal made the noise. She points and says the animals name if she can. She gets it right 9 times out of 10.

From there we moved on to an alphabet game. I knew she could do this on her own even though she'd never seen it before - it was simple keystroke advancement. The title screen came up and she started to clap with her whole body (The hands go, the feet kick together, the knees even meet once and a while.) "A! B! C!" she yelled and pointed to the three letters dancing on our screen. She made her way through all 26 letter screens and was delighted at the end to learn she could trigger the alphabet song over and over and over and over and over by smacking the space bar repeatedly.

And as fun as this is, the real computer coup came last week. Meg perched herself upon Logan's desk chair, pointed to his computer monitor and said "TV. On." Logan agreed to let her use it.

I loaded up the Thomas game he had first developed some degree of mouse control with. Megan loves that blue, smiling train now too. She's taken to hugging Logan's collection when she can. She clapped when the game started. She said the engine's names as they moved through the opening sequence.

Our first task was to wash Thomas. She put her hand on the mouse and I helped her move it to the sponge. I clicked for her. Once you've clicked on it, the cursor remains a sponge until you've cleaned the entire engine. I showed Meg this and let her go.

She did it all herself.

All of it.

And she didn't even see what the big fuss was. I clapped for her when she was done. I told her brother. She just pulled for my hand, placed the mouse in it and said "More."