Poor Subsequent Child

I remember when Max was an infant and I would dilligently fill in all the information in one of those fill-in-the-blank-paste-the-photo-in-place baby books (which is as close to it gets to scrapbooking for me) that Adam asked me if I was going to be able to keep this up when we had baby #2 and so on. Of course I would.

This morning I found that Olivia was busying herself with a preschool workbook that, by herself, she pulled out and found a pencil and was then filling out/tracing/writing all of the alphabet letters....and was already all the way up to letter "J"! Call it neglectful, forgetful, distracted, or just simply bad parenting, but now I'm starting to wonder about the time I've actually sat down to teach the poor girl anything specific. I'm afraid that she's had a lifetime of learning by gleaning. Sure, we read books and go to museums and draw pictures, but it's like I spent all my energy on teaching Max the details and then I just expected that the energy that it took to get him to a certain level must certainly be enough energy to have her reach the same point without any more effort involved on my part. Right? Haven't we done all this before? So the poor girl was writing out all of these letters in this workbook, and then when I asked her if she knew what letter it was, she didn't.

New Year's Resolution #1: Spend more time teaching Olivia.
New Year's Resolution #2: Fill in all the blanks in her Baby Book.