The Latest with The Three

While Owen has been reading-ready and actually reading (almost entirely self-taught) for a long time now (like the entire past year+), Kyle has shown almost zero interest in learning to read. We haven't pushed it or had concern about it (we're in a Waldorf School for goodness sake!!!). But it has always sort of been a curiosity to me because Kyle has forever been obsessed with books (much more so than Owen). He'd sit forever having books read to him if he could-- and has been like that literally since the first day we met him and brought a couple of board books with us to Haiti (the first books he had ever seen-- and he fell in love with them instantly). But this week there has been a huge U-turn with Kyle. He earned his "video game" (see post below) and immediately some kind of switch was switched in him. He is suddenly obsessed with spelling, reading, and phonics. I mean, obsessed. Like 24x7 locked-in obsessed. Virtually every word he says he enunciates out loud and tries to spell it out phonetically. He is particularly obsessed with which words start with a 'c' versus which words start with a 'k.' Our child who had no interest whatsoever in learning to read is now Reading Ready (capital RR) and spelling stuff like a maniac. Who knew???! {photo above of Kyle's first day with his beloved Leapster}

Owen has mastered tying a bow this week!!! Again, something we had not pushed at all. But I had bought this great 'Learn to Tie' book thing a while back, and it had been just sort of hanging around the house, and then, suddenly, this week Owen became totally interested in it and working on it for long chunks of time each day. He's been working so hard on this and he finally has it down! He's so proud of himself! {photo above of Owen's first really solidly successful bow}

Meera woke up at 6:00 this morning and started saying "NO" almost immediately. Like, with perfect clarity and pronunciation. She had been communicating 'no' for a while, but now, as of today, she's fully 100% verbally saying it so that absolutely anyone who would hear it would know exactly what she's saying. Braydon got up with her this morning and heard it repeatedly. Kyle was up next and came running to tell me he heard her say "NO!" Soon enough I heard it myself. And we all proceeded to hear it -- over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over -- allllllll daaaaaaaaaaay loooooooooooooooong. "NO!" "no." "No!!!" I'll admit, she sounds very cute saying it... but I'll also admit that it got old awfully quick. And by the end of the day when she refused every single thing that was offered her for dinner ("No!" "No!" "No!" "No!") we were all to the point of laughing (as a conscientiously better option than crying). "No" is definitely Meera's new favorite word.