Julia has been an absolute reading machine lately. Not only has she already nearly finished reading the two American Girl chapter books she took out of the school library on Friday, but she managed to read the entirety of the new American Girl book she bought at the bookstore yesterday in about 12 hours. She is SO proud of her reading skills and the fact that nary a big word can stump her. In fact, Julia has taken to loudly announcing the big words she encounters while reading.
"Mommy! RESPONSIBILITY!"
"Mommy! ENCOURAGING!"
"Mommy! MULTIPLICATION!"
"Mommy! PNEUMONIA! Did you know that I remembered that...well, was it you or Daddy who told me it starts with a P? And, like, at first I didn't know what it said, but then I figured it OUT!"
As she has plowed through so many books over the past few days, Julia naturally began to think about what she might read to fill out the rest of the week until she gets to take new books out from the school library. This topic came up during dinner this evening.
JULIA: Mommy, I have an idea!
ME: What?
JULIA: After I finish reading "Saige," I can read my BITTY TWINS American Girl book, and then I can start reading the American Girl books all over again!
ME: Good idea!
JULIA: Because, that's the good thing about books: no one can tell you when to STOP reading something or when to START reading. Well, unless, like, you don't OWN the book and you have to return it to the LIBRARY.
Well, Julia definitely hit the nail on the head there about the great aspects of books.
Throughout this dinner conversation, Madeleine was completely uninterested in both books AND her food, and was instead interested in playing with her array of Barbie dolls that she had organized around her dinner plate.
MADELEINE: (holding up her Cinderella Barbie and dancing it around) Julia, I'm making her EVIL. She wasn't GONNA be evil, but then I decided to make her START being evil.
ME: Wait, Madeleine, which one is evil?
MADELEINE: (holding up Cinderella) HER!
ME: Why is she evil?
MADELEINE: Well, she didn't START evil, but then she BECAME evil when she started being mean to Witcha!
Madeleine then launched into a made-up song about Cinderella's evil ways, during which Julia shouted, "Mommy, I need to go POOP!"
Neither kid wound up eating their dinner. But seeing as Madeleine almost NEVER eats her dinner, and seeing as Julia had an ice cream sundae and two cupcakes at a birthday party in the late afternoon, I can't say I'm surprised.
When it was time for bedtime stories, Julia opted to read to me rather than have me read to her. And boy, what an experience it was. I don't think Julia could make it through a single sentence without having to interrupt herself to remark upon some tangentially related thing.
JULIA: (reading) "Oh dear,' sighed Mrs. McIntire. 'A surprise blackout. All right everyone, let's get going. Jill, you close the blackout curtains. Ricky, turn off all the lights." WAIT. MOM. Why would they be turning off the lights if it was a BLACKOUT? Wouldn't the lights already BE off?
ME: I think it's a pretend blackout. Like a practice drill so that if there ever was a real blackout people would know what to do.
JULIA: Oh. (resuming reading) "Molly and Emily, you take Brad downstairs." Wait. Mom. One time at school we had a PRETEND fire drill, in the middle of ART class!
ME: Yeah, sometimes you'll have surprise drills, just to make sure you know how to act quickly when you weren't expecting to have to do anything.
JULIA: (back to the book) "I'll get some blankets and be right down." (gazing up in the air with a faraway look in her eyes and a smile on her face) Wait. Mom. Did you know that when we HAD the surprise fire drill, all the kids were, like, saying, "Do you think it's a REAL fire?"
ME: Oh, really? Why don't you keep reading?
JULIA: "Molly was halfway to the stairs..." (gazing off into the air again) Mom? But I don't think it was a REAL fire.
ME: Jules? We're never going to get through this chapter if you keep yapping at me.
And so forth and so on. I've gotta say, Julia must be a speed-reader when she does her silent reading, if she's able to churn through so many books in such a short time, all whilst fielding the multiple millions of slightly related thoughts flying through her head the whole time!
Julia, isn't pneumonia weird in having a silent p at the beginning of the word? That is because it came from the Greek word, which is spelled using the p and n but, in Greek, you'd pronounce these letters. It looks like this in Greek πνευμονία or in the American alphabet like this pnevmonia and you would pronounce the "v" in the middle of the word. Just some information from your Greek grandmother, Yiayia!
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