Yeehaw!!!!!!!!!!

Saddle up your horses, the boy can read!!!!!

Oh it is fantastic. Fabulous. Fun-erific. To watch him read is like nothing else, and like everything else. As they learn a new thing, you get to watch them figure it out. It is the greatest priviledge on earth. I cannot put enough exclaimation points in this paragraph to fully illustrate my huge happy feelings. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tonight at bedtime Leif read me an entire story, 10 pages of text, full of words like 'frightening' and 'listen'. He has accepted that our language is just wacky. That it does not always follow all the rules set out to teach you english. Why are there silent p's and t's? Why doesn't that say 'h-ay've' instead of 'have'? It should be a long A sound because of the E after the V. And we nod, yes it should. But doesn't. I remember very clearly as a young kid, driving around with my parents and reading the street signs 'Taylor Way' and 'Marine Drive'. And now in the van I hear leif every few seconds yelling from the back seat 'Linden!' and 'Fort! And his fabulous sister Hannah, looking at one of Ivy's toys the other day (upon which it says Manhatten Baby or something, the name of the brand) saying 'B . . . buh . .buh-aye-bee . .buu-aye-bee toys . . baby toys!' thinking she is reading what it's called. It all just bows me away, it is so bloody cool.

Today Ivy was sitting on the floor in the changeroom (we were shopping with Kit) and she was playing with my kes beside the mirror. And we looked at her, and she was slowly lifting her hand with the keys up and down up and down, and wathcing it moving in the mirror. She was fully engrossed in this, marvelling at that baby in here. So then she sang to it, in her lilting alto way that she does. It was great!


So everyone's well here, and growing and changing as expected. I've decided not to go back to La Luna. As Kit put it, 'if you had one night a week to do whatever you wanted, for yourself, is that what you'd choose to do with it?'. Um, no. So I've signed up for Bollywood dance classes. (Be proud of me Shannon, my Bollywood princess!). Kit is back to Ultimate twice a week, and between that and working on designs and estimates after-hours, he's kept very busy. We're both learning to find ways to balance being with 'the family' and then finding time for our own interests. So we're learning and changing too, with the kids.



I met up with a friend of mine from high school the other day. He's in Victoria with his wife, because she's in a play that'll be showing soon at our local theatre (The Belfry, a beautiful restored building). So her play is called Homechild and it's about the home children basically stolen or tricked into coming to Canada, to work as slaves on Canadian farms. When I learned this, I kinda hopped in my seat. I know all about homechildren, my ancestor and his siblings all came to Canada that way. My friends were surprised, they had yet to find anyone who'd ever heard about homechildren. They called it Canada's dirty little secret. I told them about the documentary about the Bernardo children, and they had already seen it. It was great to meet people who actually had heard about this. I'm the only one of my friends who knows about it either. Thank you Aunt Lou for keeping such good records of all of that stuff.



I am excitedly awaiting the birth of my neice or nephew. Ashley and Virginia's baby is due in about a month, and we're all wishing them well.

Hannah is FOUR!!!


FOUR!!!



FOUR!!!! Can U Believe it????? She is one sassy, spunky little chiquita. Her current passions are playing music on the electric piano. You can punch in keys and get it to play a whole range of songs, which Hannah calls 'funny tunes'. Every morning, she goes right to the piano and fires it up. Before breakfast. She'll march around the room to the beat and laugh at the intricate sounds.

When Leif gets up, he immediatly comes to the kitchen table and sits down to wait. He's waiting for whichever adult comes out of the bedroom first (which is usually me) to sit down and play whatever game we left off the night before. It's always either Scrabble or chess. It's fabulous, as both Kit and I enjoy playing both of these games, so we're happy to play over eggs or pancakes. I play Scrabble online as well and Leif likes to sit beside me and asks about the words I spell and tries to spell his own.


I tell ya, this parenting gig rocks.


C