Stories about Phoebe

Monday's reading lesson was a disaster, which is fine. "We" are three. Disasters are to be expected. 

Every word was "the"; it didn't matter what the word looked like...Phoebe decided it was probably "the" and then would get upset when I would make her sound the actual sounds out. 

I was plenty frustrated as well. 

But Tuesday's reading lesson was a breeze. 

One of the words we've been focusing on the last couple of days is "duck."

That is such a tricky word for Phoebe. She's been working hard on her fronting habits and can successfully say "duck" now, but when she has to say it so many times (three times in one story!) it starts to be a bit much for her. Throughout the course of sounding out, reading, and responding to questions, I heard duck, guck, gut, and dut ("dut" being her default pronunciation). 

Knowing when to use the front of her tongue instead of the back of her tongue simply isn't quite intuitive for her yet, but she's getting the feel of things and corrects herself when she says dut...gut...guck...duck. 

Cat is another tricky word, although we've been working on that word for so long that she's pretty good at throwing out "cat" the first time. It used to always be "tat." Sometimes it comes out "tac."

She's working on it.

*****

It's October. The pool has been closed for two whole days. The kids complain they're still hot.

I told them I don't want to set up the sprinkler right now. 

"Can we have popsicles then?" Alexander asked.

"Oooh, yes! Popsicles!" Phoebe said, "Those cool me up!"

*****

After scriptures and prayer this evening, Phoebe just about brought a book to me so I could read to her, but halfway to me she remembered that she hadn't really seen Daddy today (it was a "long campus day") so she decided that he should read her the story.

She picked this story out of the Little Free Library up on the corner. I didn't even notice that she'd done it. Miriam and I were perusing a few books, in fact—there was a little picturebook in German that I convinced Miriam she should take for reading practice and a WWII novel, which we're always suckers for at our house—when Phoebe suddenly chirped, "Well, see ya! I'm going home!"

And she ran off down the street.

It's like three houses away. I was not concerned. 

When we got home she said, "Will you read my new book to me?"

"What new book?" I asked.

"The one she got at the Little Free Library..." Andrew said. "You were there..."

"I saw her run home. I didn't know she'd grabbed a book!"

"Well, she did and she brought it home and told me all about it. She's very excited."

So, I sat down to read her new book to her—it's a version of Beauty and the Beast—and she's remained excited about it since adopting it (and it's just fine that she took a book, since anyone can...I just didn't realize that she had). Daddy did a delightfully dramatic reading of the tale:

*****

On our walk today, Phoebe found a "mommy" pinecone and two "baby" pinecones. They are, in fact, pinecones from different species of trees, and she's somewhat cognizant of that because a while ago she found a pinecone, carried it around for a while, decided it was too cumbersome/poky to take much further, and found a pine tree to leave it with, instructing it to grow beside its mother (the tree being the mother in this case). But imagination will not be bounded by something as trivial as facts!

So this was a pinecone family—a mommy pinecone with two baby pinecones:

"These baby pinecones look just like their mother," Phoebe crooned.

She's set them up in containers with food ("Momma, what does a pinecone eat?") and water so they can be happy and healthy. I will empty those containers out as soon as she forgets about them (which will probably be soon). 

Here she is a few days ago (September 28), having found my backup pair of glasses in the bathroom. She walked out to show me, noting that now she looks just like me...and that I should let her wear them because I seem to have a new pair and and old pair and I don't need two.

I told her that she was super cute...but...it's not good for her eyes to wear Mommy's glasses (though this might be partially myth-based), Mommy doesn't love it when Phoebe gets smudges all over Mommy's glasses, and Mommy does need two pairs of glasses because sometimes there's an emergency when Mommy needs a second pair (like if a certain child whacks Mommy in the face with a pool noodle and shatters her glasses). So we put them back where they belong.

But Phoebe did look adorable in them!