We have reading!!

Drew, who is by far the better parent than I (me?), always is searching for teachable moments with Rachel. For instance, she knows the basics of very simple subtraction because while she was working away at her Halloween gummy bears, he'd say, "OK, you have 6 bears on your plate. What's six takeaway one?"

It took her a couple of tries, but now she knows to say, "Five!"

When she gets down to one, and Drew says, "What's one takeaway one?"
"Zero!" she shouts.
Drew apparently doesn't intend to introduce her to negative numbers. Yet.

***

OK, so tonight I was mixing up some chocolate quick bread as part of a fundraiser for our synagogue (the auction winner gets one quick bread per month from me, for six months; we're starting with chocolate peppermint bread and moving on to gingerbread, pumpkin bread, cinnamon streusel bread, banana chocolate chip bread and finishing up with orange tea bread) when Drew came in and announced flatly, "Rachel can read."

"What?!?" I gasped. "You really need to let me turn off the mixer before you drop a bombshell like that."

Turns out there was a reason she didn't get to bed tonight until after 10 -- they were reading "Snow White" for the millionth time, and Rachel asked, as usual, what certain words meant, and then Rachel started sounding them out, like Drew told her to, and after a couple of tries she can now read "the" wherever it appears in the story. And "snow." and "white."

She may, in fact, be reading even before she's 4! War and Peace, anyone??




***

Cute Rachel sayings today:

At breakfast this morning, she asked me, "Is today a school day?"
"No, sweetie!" I answered cheerfully.
"Yay!" she said. Then added in a singsongy voice, "I can fool around!!"

***

Drew and I were up quite late last night -- me watching an escapist movie because I really needed to; Drew finishing up the latest book he's reviewing for the Seattle Times. Result: We slept quite late this morning -- until 9ish -- and Rachel, bless her little heart, was so quiet! She never even knocked on our door.


Finally I heard her breathing outside, got up, pulled on some clothes and took her into the kitchen.

"I was windering, 'when are they ever gonna wake up?' she said. "I was worried!"

***

Drew made cinnamon French toast for breakfast out of the challah he bought yesterday. It was delicious. Rachel noticed our 90-year-old neighbor, Fay, through the kitchen window.

"I'm having cinnamon French toast, neighbor Fay!" she said (Rachel apparently believes "Neighbor Fay" is her name). "Do you want one? Is it yummy?"