This paper describes how one group of Euro-American, middle-class two-year-olds living in the southern US learned to form and enact locally appropriate textual intentions and literate identities as they participated in writing events. Data were collected during a nine-month ethnographic study of two-year-olds' and adults' interactions at a preschool writing table. Adult talk functioned to elicit information about the children's writing, to guide their participation, and to showcase adult writing activities as demonstrations. Children observed adult writing, initiated their own graphic activities, and co-authored with adults. A large portion of children's talk involved verbal or gestural descriptions of their intentions. Microanalysis of intertextual connections in adult-child talk showed how children learned intentionality through joint participation in writing, focusing on five key patterns: a) the joint negotiation of textual intentions in face-to face interaction, b) the forceful nature of the "pedagogical mode of address," c) children's use of existing resources to take up roles as writers, d) changes in participation, and e) children's agency in shaping their participation as writers. (Contains 5 tables, 4 figures and 1 note.)