Smart Ones

Tonight Nutmeg read a book. I've long suspected she was almost ready to read a whole book because of the number of street signs and such she reads. But in the past anxiety seemed to be holding her back.

Tonight I came into the girls' room because Pebbles had been crying instead of sleeping. Nutmeg told me she'd been reading her sister "Sugar Snow"; a kids' version of a chapter from "Little House in the Big Woods."; (Yep, I just affiliate-linked my own child's baby book moment. Shameless!)

But she was getting stuck on a certain page.

Neither of the girls were ready to sleep because they're still on Cali time. So after taking care of the baby, I took Nutmeg into my room and we looked at the book together. She read sentence after sentence, asking for help on a few words, such as "while." Often I only had to prompt her to tell me the first sound and she would figure out the word.

When we finished she was obviously thrilled with herself, and I was just as ecstatic. My baby read a book! My baby taught herself to read. It doesn't surprise me, but it does thrill me. How could it not? I love reading, and I love to watch her standing on the threshhold with all of literature spread out before her. Hey, kid -- don't get those books dirty! Wipe your feet on the mat!

Also, Pebbles smartness: She now has a two-word phrase: "where go?" She always accompanies it with a little palms-up gesture and a rising voice. Sometimes she prefaces it with the noun about which she's enquiring. Last night as we looked out the airplane window, she was all, "Plane -- where go?" Except when she says it it sounds like, "Pay -- wuh go?" So just in case we didn't get it, she makes a little flying motion with her hand and a "shoom" sound with her mouth.

Oh, we get it, Peb. And we're getting a load of you.