My daughter. Genius already at 1 and a half years old, or coincidence?
A couple of days ago I was watching a video on my ipad of a Lamborghini doing Lamborghini type things. My daughter gets off of my lap and returns a minute later with a hotwheel of her brother's. Which one? The only Lamborghini hotwheel he has! It wasn't even the same color as the one in the video so it wasn't a match the color type of situation. Genius? Or coincidence? I just don't know. But wait, there is another similar situation.
A day later, Enzo and I were reading "A Fish out of Water by Hellen Palmer." That's how Enzo always refers to his favorite book. What do you want to read tonight Enzo? "A Fish out of Water by Hellen Palmer" he invariably answers each and every time. Not just 'the fish book' or 'the one we always read now.' No; he gives credit to Hellen Palmer each time. Well, we were reading and Ana was sitting near us. She hasn't gotten into reading 'with' us when we read in bed but she sits around us and sometimes plays with a different book. So, after I read the book aloud Enzo decides it's his turn to read the book and he starts from the last page and "reads" aloud the words as best he remembers for the various pages he flips to. He also makes up, in a pretend reading kind of way, words as though he were reading, when he does not remember the words for a page. Ana, watching this, says something that sounds almost like she was trying to say "I want to read too." The new word here is that she was trying to say 'read.' So I said, "Ana, do you want to practice reading like your brother?" And she said, "Yeah!" And in my mind I thought how cool that was that my daughter who does not know her ABC's yet, and can't read, wants to play at reading. She got off of the bed, looked for a book, and returned with the book titled "I can read with my eyes shut" by Dr. Seuss. Coincidence or genius? She wanted to 'read', said 'read' for the first time, and picked a book with the word 'read' on the title.
Genius or coincidence... we may never know... But two good anecdotes none the less.
Two technicalities to wrap up.
Chances are nobody noticed or remembers, but I have left two open ended situations on this blog and that bothers me. Probably only me. Still, it's time to wrap those up and put them to rest in my mind. Consider this paragraph like the required legal announcements in a newspaper; no one is expected to read them but they satisfy some technicality some where. In this case, the technicality is in my mind. The first is that I had previously mentioned my thinking of going back to grad school. I left that open ended for the near term. Now, it is clear to me that for now, the answer is no. I do not want to go to grad school right now. Who knows what will be desired in a decade but for now, I choose no. Number two open ended situation, I mentioned a while back that I wrote a kids book and that I was excited to draw up the art work and make a book for my kids. I have since gone back to my notes more than once. And the truth is... it's simply not a good book at all. I even tried to rewrite the whole thing a couple of days ago. No, it's time to let that one go. Open ended situations- Closed. Well now, I feel a little cleaner and less burdened in my mind.
Story Time
These are pictures of my son telling Tata a story on our patio a few nights ago. It was nicely animated and passionately told.
