Reading

Watching Micah learn to read has been amazing and honestly, kind of surprising. I wasn't surprised that he could sound out words pretty quickly, and he does a decent job of writing things phonetically, but all of a sudden he's actually reading. It started with reading signs while we're driving, reading one or two words on the page of a book when I'm reading to him, really just reading random text that he comes across. Yesterday though, we were driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house and he actually read a Curious George book to himself in the backseat. That was the first time ever as far as I know. He's read plenty of books out loud to us or to Penelope, but this was the first time he sat down with a book and read it quietly to himself. He's been learning to read for all of four months. I don't imagine that I could learn anything remotely that complex in that time. It's sort of unbelievable.

No More Nummies

This post should have happened three weeks ago, but better late than never! Penelope is done with her pacifier. It started with a particularly rough night when I had to go into her room about four times to find her pacifier for her. I decided the next day that we were done. She went to bed without it pretty well, cried a bit, but then slept. She napped the next day without it a little less happily. The second night she went to bed and then was crying, "I'm not a big kid! I'm just a baby! I need a nummy!" It was pretty adorable and also heartbreaking.

But she made it. We spent a week in New Jersey at Christmas without the pacifier, two long car trips there and back, we've been home for a week now still with no pacifier.

Of course, she grows and changes every day, she's talking more, she's thinking more, she has commentary while we watch television shows together, she has food preferences, she's thinking about letters and numbers and colors just a little bit more. Everything has been kicked up a notch in the last month or two. I guess it was just time to move on from the pacifier.