My Stella is a reader…a lover of books, words, letters, etc. as you will see from the pictures below (we even met Clifford). She gets it honest from both Andy and me. She is the type of kid that would rather sit and read than play dress-up. She asks you to look things up on the computer (“Mom, what does a brain look like?”; “Well, it’s hard to explain, let’s see…”; “Mom, just look it up on the computer.”) and always wants to point out places on maps. When the weather man is on we have to pause it so she can show us where Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are…and if they show even more of the map she may yell “That’s where Papa Kenny lives” while pointing to Florida. She’s a brainiac which comes with pros and cons.
When Stella turned 3 1/2 in December she was accepted into the daycare’s reading program…normally attended by 4-5 year olds. She soaked it in and has done great reading memorizing her sight words. Then we noticed that when she got stumped, she really did start sounding things out – too cool. A couple of weeks into it she began one-on-one sessions because she was helping correcting the 4-5 year olds too much in the group setting.
My point in all of this is that after the reading group learned 25 sight words they got to take a trip to Dairy Queen (about a block away). And Stella was ECSTATIC. She was thrilled because she got to ride the daycare “bus” which she didn’t think she’d get to ride until she was 5 and headed to kindergarten. As she jumped up and down in the hallway telling me all about the upcoming adventure our conversation went like this:
Me, the mommy – Stella, are you so excited?
S – YES!
Me – Where are you going?
S – DAIRY QUEEN!
Me – Do you even know what Dairy Queen is?
S – (pauses) NO!
Me – Well, what do you think they have?
S – Um, maybe….spaghetti??
Nice. She was even more thrilled to learn from daddy later that evening that Dairy Queen = ICE CREAM!
(Side Note – A sweet acquaintance of mine from college is having her third baby today! Please send her and her family happy thoughts. We knew each other in college, but weren’t close friends. Now we keep up via FB and reading each other’s blogs…we have quite a bit in common. Her baby today will make their family also have three kids 3 & under…I’m not the only insane one around here! Her oldest is also a brainiac and her middle child is a riot (in a good way). Sadly, we’ve still never gotten together since college…our kids would love each other and it’s my 2011 goal to schedule a play date. And that’s a pinky promise.)
i definitely shouldn’t read blogs with all these postpartum hormones. i was already crying a bit reading about how excited stella was to go to dairy queen, and then i saw your note. you are too sweet…reading about how great your family of 5 is makes me excited as our family grows. and yes, let’s get something on the calendar!! 🙂