A Conversation With Cuddlebug

This is the kind of conversation that around here, we affectionately call, "nuerons firing randomly."

Cuddlebug and I were having her reading lesson today, and were practicing the difference between "th," and "f." After a few tries, looking intensely at one another's mouth for how the sounds are formed, Cuddlebug says to me, "Mommy, you have a tooth that is out this way and the other ones are that way."

"Yes, I know. But you love me anyway, right?"

(Of course, the irony is that my orthodonture is being criticized by a little girl whose overbite is so pronounced that she can almost suck her thumb with her mouth closed.)

As we gaze in one another's eyes, she asks, "What is that black dot in your eye?"

"That is my pupil."

"What's a pupil?"

"That black dot in my eye."

"Mommy, let's read."

And she does. Today, she read:

"This is a cat.
The cat can run.
Mud is on the cat."

I think we read the last sentence 3 or 4 times before the comprehension was there well enough for her to narrate it back to me. But otherwise, she is succeeding and is enjoying her progress. Everyday, she asks me a half-dozen times if it's time for her reading lesson. She is on lesson 30 of 100.

She's an early reader -- really early to our way of thinking, but thankfully, her big sister, Dumpling can still feel confident in having finished her "100 Easy Lessons" book on Monday. She is beginning to read things on her own initiative, and finding it easier every day, it seems.

I can't even imagine giving over these milestones to a stranger. I am blessed.