Tired of the war? Just turn it O-F-F!
I have walked a total of seven miles today, according to my iPhone pedometer app. I think it reads a little high on the mileage but close enough. Morning walk, lunch walk, and a short walk after coming home. I always walk at 0-skunk-30. I almost always walk at lunch but sometimes I do other things. I NEEDED to walk after work this afternoon. I had a wonderful time at my job today but it was intense and my brain does fuzzy logic very well, thank you very much, but after a whole day of that, I had to walk things off a bit.
One of our nephews tweeted today about how his beautiful daughter is rather fixated upon books about ducks. Well, been there, done that. Except it was the fine aminal the mouse that my particular daughter got fixated on. The younger daughter, the one that’s in the photo with the chocolate (I hope) face, the one who has insisted on being called Mouse ever since she was old enough to express that desire, and that was earlier than most kids, since she was talking in complete, perfectly enunciated sentences by about 16 months old.
When Mouse was three years old, we would go to the library and she would choose books to check out by scanning the spines of the books on the shelves and picking out only those with the word “Mouse” in the title. Actually, once I figured out what was going on, I think that encouraging her to check out books with “duck” in the title was how I got her beyond the “mouse” books. Duckies are pretty cute too, after all.
I wouldn’t characterize my Mouse as one of those ultra-smart early readers. She was/is ultra smart (nothing to do with yer favo-rite blahgger except for the birth canal) and she read some words pretty early but, in the grand scheme of things, the first time I remember her reading an actual book from start to finish was in first grade. I could be wrong. Who am I, after all? Just a baggy old kayak woman who happened to have a couple of kids along the way.
Instead, I think she was capable of being one of those ultra-smart three-year-old readers. I just don’t think she wasn’t (yeah) totally focused on reading at that time. She could read if she needed to. Like the time during the 1991 gulf war when her baggy old moom couldn’t quite turn off the war on the tiny little TV in the Landfill Chitchen. “Turn off the war, mom.” Over and over. And then the kid who learned how to spell the word “Mouse” at 2-1/2 figured out that “O-F-F” would turn the dern TV (and war) off and make her baggy old moom interact with her.
That is all. I have wonderful friends. Real life and Internet. And relatives (inlaws totally included). I love you all. Good night. -KW
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I took my girls to the library every week with old laundry containers(empty) with handles where they could put their books. They decorated the outside of them too–such wonderful memories.
June 4th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Rey learned to read pretty early, and it was handy when trying to read books to the kids at night. I would start falling asleep and get the words wrong. When I got tired of being corrected, I would just tell him to do the reading, and he would willingly oblige. He still reads to me in the car when we travel, although we have not had the opportunity since he moved out of state.