Spontaneous Counting

Zilla has been very interested in numbers for some time now.  Thanks to Handy Manny he often prefers to count from 1-10 in Spanish.  Counting and numbers is a concept that it seems you need to experience rather than to be taught.  In our regular conversations we not only use descriptive words to describe color and size but also the number of items.
The other night though I was thrown for a loop... while my husband and I were hanging out at the table after eating supper Zilla headed for his activity shelf and got to work on the fridge.  Before long he lined up the numbers 1-10.  Ok, so it is right to left and a few of the numbers are upside down, but the point is that at 3yrs. 6 mo. he can do it on his own - unprompted.  Once again he jumped ahead of where I thought he was!