C A T

Now that we're well into spring, my rule of "no getting up until it's light" is no longer working so well.  This morning Elias tried to climb into bed with me at 5:43 am.  Sure enough:  it was getting light already, and some birds were singing. Gotta update that rule... Anyway, Elias wasn't about to return to his bed and instead proclaimed "I read book."  Fine.  I rolled over to go back to sleep...but of course it was a doomed attempt.  Elias returned in about a minute with his arms full of books which he unloaded onto my bed, clambering up after them.  He set up shop and proceeded to open the first one.  I feigned sleep.  He started turning pages and identifying letters.  Then he started saying the sounds of the letters:  "C"... "A"... "T"...  I peeked.  He was pointing to the word "cat."  He stayed on that word, pointing to each letter and saying the sounds, slowly, then in quicker sequence.  "C..A..T ....C..AT ...C.A.T ...CAT!...Frog!"  Wow!  He really was reading it!  His proclaimation of "frog" at the end wasn't the sounded-out word; it was a reference to his Leapfrog video, from which he learned the sounds of the letters.  He recognizes his written name, but this was the first I've witnessed him sounding out a word for himself.

So, that was worth waking up for after all...although I still wish I could sleep in.

Today's Tidbits II

At church today Elias ran up to the director of children's ministries and said "God keeps us safe!" (their first memory verse from this fall).

After church we played in the snow a little. It was nice and sunny, but more importantly, the single-digit temperatures we've been dealing with lately have departed. Elias likes stomping on top of the snow and occasionally falling through. I took out the little disk sled I got, and Elias did his first sledding in the front yard. He was of course fearless, but after just a couple runs was more interested in taking off in search of the neighbors' horses. We haven't seen them all winter, but he still asks about them in some capacity several times every day.

After a more-reasonable (2.5hr) nap today, we made muffins.  Elias puts the paper cups in the tin, adds the mix and milk, and madly stirs it, all while trying to keep me from "interfering."

As we were sitting down to dinner, Elias spelt his name!  This is actually his second spelling feat:  he already spells "action" along to his "Kids in Action" CD.