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A conversation just occurred between myself and my two-year-old sister, Leandra.
She had been put in her crib to sleep, and I asked her for a goodnight hug, a kiss, a nuzzle... She finally got exasperated and said, "No! I'm reading a book!" and proceeded to do exactly that. Her crib is pretty much carpeted with books, kind of like, um, the floor next to my bed. (A few of them stay on the bed itself, but end up getting pushed off by sleep-flailing me, or the cats.)
When she finished reading, she proceeded to pick up all of the books and catalogue them: "a book, and another book, and another book, and another book, and another book, and a two book, and a three book, and a li-berry book" -- then she corrected herself, "--and a kitty li-berry book, and a little panda book, and a spider book..." She looked at the spider book, then opened my hand and firmly placed the book therein. "Nini, read it."
However, when I opened the book -- which contains photographs of spiders named after objects, the object, and then names the spider (for example wolf and wolf spider) -- she proceeded to read it to me -- entirely correctly.
And when we were finished, she turned to Heidi, our other sister, who was getting ready for bed nearby, handed her a new book, and ordered her to read that one.
This child? Whom you may also remember loves Rupa & the April Fishes, the Paper Raincoat (especially "Sympathetic Vibrations", which she calls "oh-oh"), joyously roudy Newfoundland band Great Big Sea (she can sing half of their songs), the Sparrow Quartet, and Benny Goodman? Is me, 2.0. (When I was two, story has it that I walked into my father's office while he was burrowed in innumerable graduate school studies, asked him to read me a book, and when he refused several times, I reached up, closed his clearly boring schoolbook, said, "the end", and handed him my book again: "Read it!")
She had been put in her crib to sleep, and I asked her for a goodnight hug, a kiss, a nuzzle... She finally got exasperated and said, "No! I'm reading a book!" and proceeded to do exactly that. Her crib is pretty much carpeted with books, kind of like, um, the floor next to my bed. (A few of them stay on the bed itself, but end up getting pushed off by sleep-flailing me, or the cats.)
When she finished reading, she proceeded to pick up all of the books and catalogue them: "a book, and another book, and another book, and another book, and another book, and a two book, and a three book, and a li-berry book" -- then she corrected herself, "--and a kitty li-berry book, and a little panda book, and a spider book..." She looked at the spider book, then opened my hand and firmly placed the book therein. "Nini, read it."
However, when I opened the book -- which contains photographs of spiders named after objects, the object, and then names the spider (for example wolf and wolf spider) -- she proceeded to read it to me -- entirely correctly.
And when we were finished, she turned to Heidi, our other sister, who was getting ready for bed nearby, handed her a new book, and ordered her to read that one.
This child? Whom you may also remember loves Rupa & the April Fishes, the Paper Raincoat (especially "Sympathetic Vibrations", which she calls "oh-oh"), joyously roudy Newfoundland band Great Big Sea (she can sing half of their songs), the Sparrow Quartet, and Benny Goodman? Is me, 2.0. (When I was two, story has it that I walked into my father's office while he was burrowed in innumerable graduate school studies, asked him to read me a book, and when he refused several times, I reached up, closed his clearly boring schoolbook, said, "the end", and handed him my book again: "Read it!")
