We just finished reading Stuart Little as our bedtime story, chapter by chapter over a couple weeks. It was really fun for the first couple days and then less so as two-year-old Irene became impatient with the lack of pictures and sophisticated language. Colum loved it, though, and so did I, so we persevered. Last night I was looking forward to making short work of story time and let each kid choose a small picture book.
Irene chose a story called Worse than Rotten Ralph about a trouble-making cat and Colum chose Dr. Suess’ Hop on Pop. Perfect. Except when I opened Hop on Pop Colum started to read the book himself and then proceeded to read the entire thing from start to finish, each and every word. Yes, it’s a simple first reader book and he’s very familiar with it. But he was really focusing on each word and working them all out with only minimal prompting from me.
I am so proud. It’s a swollen heart, dance down the stairs kind of proud. He’s only four and a half and I don’t know if this counts as reading per se, but it is close. Very, very close.
It never ceases to amaze me how my kids just seem learn things all at once and seemingly on their own. I thought Irene could only count to three until one day I heard her count to twelve. And then Colum just picks up a book and freaking reads it.
Blows my mind.
Of course, there was nothing fast about that story time either. Sigh. Irene will just have to deal, I guess.