Whiz Kids

Last night was the traditional family banquet held as part of the Twelve Days of Lily, followed by the traditional ceremony The Cutting of the Cake.

Jason, Laura, Matt and Rachael were there, but surprisingly every picture I took seems to have Lily in it.

I won't make you sit through a litany of how wonderful Lily is (but if you would like one, just e-mail me and I will happily respond). But I would like to tell you about her grasp of modern technology.

I am already used to the fact that since the age of 4 she has known how to run the DVD player better than I did - and I am totally serious about that. She is in total control with an iPod, absolutely knows how to do whatever is needed on mobile phones and figures out most computer programs in less time than it takes me to get out the manual.

Matt tells me this is par for the course for her friends, as well. These very young children just take technology in its stride. And they seem to intuit how to do the stuff that seems so difficult for many of us to master when new tech comes along. A remote control or a mouse seem to be natural extensions of their arms.

Lily slept over with us last night, and this morning I showed her the video "Lily and Peg" that I uploaded to YouTube where she and her great-grandmother were chatting. When it ended, she asked, "Is this on the Internet?" I told her it was, and she said she wanted to use Google.

I showed her where the search box was and she typed in "Lily and Peg and YouTube". Her typing is faster than many adults I know, and when the still from the video showed up at the top of the search page, she was excited. "I'm Number One on Google," she said.

It's all a bit offputting to think that someone who just turned 7-years-old this week is so proficient at all of this. And by the way, she's not the only one who's getting pretty good at this tech stuff.

At the other end of the age spectrum, my father, Red, discovered the riches of YouTube himself this week. For the last couple of days, he's been raving that all the old songs are there and he's having a ball watching Bing Crosby and his contemporaries crooning away. I am timing it to see how long before he figures out there's naughty bits there, too.