Annabel is Reading!

It is now official: Annabel is reading.

She has been able to sound out a word or two for quite some time, but she hasn't really liked doing it and after a few would get frustrated and ask you to just read it to her. Well, this weekend we got her the The Bob Books, and all of that changed.

The first book, "Mat" was easy enough for her to master on the first try. The text of the entire book is as follows:

Mat. (Page 1)
Mat sat. (Page 2)
Sam. (Page 3)
Sam sat. (Page 4)
Mat sat. Sam Sat. (Page 5)
Mat sat on Sam. (Page 6 with hysterical picture)

Sam sat on Mat. (Page 7)
Mat sat. Sam sat. (Page 8)
The End.

Here are some pics from this morning's performance of Mahalo (That means Thank You in Hawaiian) at Annabel's Kindergarten. It includes a dance solo featuring Annabel as well as photo of her with the microphone. She said

"My name is Annabel. Mahalo for my family"

Someway to make it seem more airplaneish

From Halloween

One morning last week Annabel told me that she wanted me to help her build an airplane.

"A paper plane, you mean?" I asked.
"No, a real plane. We can make it out of stuff we have in the garage. And then Gaby and I can fly up to a rainbow and get some colors to paint with."

I looked at her, a bit incredulous.

"Did you see something like that on TV?" I asked.

"No. Can we do it Daddy?"
"Yeah, can we?!" Asks Gaby now suddenly involved as well.
"Well, we can't make a real plane." I say shaking my head.

"Lets go to the garage!" Annabel suggests.
"Yeah!" Gaby seconds the motion.

Now it's about 7:30 in the morning. They need to leave for school in about 10 minutes. "Okay, really quick." I say.

We go to the garage and Annabel immediately grabs Kristin's yoga mat and the old plastic baby wash-basin that we had for when the girls were infants.

"This is the runway!" she says rolling out the yoga mat.
"And we can attach wheels to this, she says pointing to the wash basin."

Now I have to admit to having had this exact same impulse myself when I was a kid. I remember thinking that it should be possible to just throw a plane together out of extra junk. So I did want to make this happen for them even if only slightly. So I am thinking of ways to build wings and attach them to the washbasin to make it seem more airplaneish.

"I'll tell you what." I say "We'll do it this weekend, okay?"

"Yay!" they both readily agree.

Saturday rolls around, and I have to remind them that it's time for the airplane work. I think Gaby had forgotten completely and it was not top of mind for Annabel either. We go outside and I start to explain that first we need to make plans. We have to measure some things and then go to the store.

"No, lets just make it." Annabel says.

"Well you can't just make it" I say. "You need to do some work first, then you can make it. We can probably have it made by tomorrow if we work hard."

"No thanks." Says Annabel lets do something faster.

"Well we can go to walgreens and get some toy planes there or I can make some paper planes."

"Perfect!" they say.

:)

D-A-D, I need something to drink!

It's been a while, I know. Lots of updates since the last posting.

Annabel is still really enjoying school. She is on her way to reading and can sound out many words if she wants to put the effort into it. She know how many three letter words are spelled and she has taken to calling me D-A-D, and Kristin M-O-M. She will sometimes call out that way from downstairs "D-A-D, I need something to drink!".

She is maturing by the minute. Her vocabulary is expanding quickly. She will say things like "I'm considering it" or "It's really very sad that Jaguars are endagered."

She loves going to the school library ckecking out books. Last week was "How and Why Mammals Hide", a non-fiction book about cute little animals and the crazy places that they find to hide. It features fieldmice, turtles and ever the star-nosed mole, which hides in holes in the ground, of course. It's due back tomorrow.

We went to ride bikes in the park this weekend, which I haven't done with the girls in several months. We talked about taking off her training wheels this week, but at the last minute she decided to keep them on just a little longer...

First Day Of School

Yesterday was Annabel's first day of school. Overall, I think it went swimmingly.

We had been to the school the day before for a family social event, so the place wasn't overwhelmingly new to her, which was nice. She had also visited the classroom on Monday for an hour so she knew her teacher's face and those of a few classmates.

We took pictures at home in the morning, and then headed over to the school at about 7:45 (school starts at 8:15). We walked through the school together as a family while we waited for the classroom doors to open at 8:00. We checked out the library and Annabel was excited to see so many books. She liked the idea that she could come read them when she wanted. And the librarian was just perfect:

"You get to come here twice a week with your teacher and pick out anything you want!" she said.

Parents and kids started to collect in front of the classroom at about 8:00 and then there were about 15 minutes of awkwardness while the parents milled around the classroom trying to let the kids get acclimated and the kids tried to figure out what to do.

Annabel got a piece of paper and started coloring. Several students followed.

Then the teacher hit play on a tape recorder (yes, a tape recorder!) and a slightly tinny version of "Good Day Sunshine" punched out. Annabel's head went up in recognition. She stood up and walked over to the carpet and sat down. A few other kids did the same. She was one of the first on the carpet. Reading it now, it sound like a scene from the Manchurian candidate. The teacher was delighted.

"You remembered! You remembered!" she exclaimed. Clearly she had gone over this with them the day before.

Annabel was clearly proud to be one of the ones who remembered. Then all the other kids made their way to the carpet. Annabel started to look around for us, recognizing that now was when the parents were to leave. She got a little anxious when she saw us all the way across the room from here.

"I want a hug." she said to Kristin and me. We made our way over and hugged her much to her relief. (I actually managed to catch Kristin's hug on film (picture below). The other parents all did the same and we were off.


We picked her up 3 hours later and she bounced out of the room and seemed generally happy with the way things went. She was very happy about an apple that she was holding. There is a big bowl of them in the hall, free to anyone who wants one. She had been looking forward to that since she first heard about it earlier in the summer.

"I got an apple!" she said happily as I walked up.

New Shoes

Annabel got some new shoes today. She walked into the house and proudly marched over to me with them on her feet. I looked at them.

"Are those new shoes?" I asked.

"See? These have a C-Strap." She said.

"Whats a C-Strap?" I aked.
"It's like laces, but I can do it myself."

And she showed me. This is the shoe, and indeed it is just like laces, but the laces cinch together with a single Velcro strap.

I gave an impressed look and nodded in approval. "Wow." I said.

Then she launched into a commercial, clearly one she had heard frequently enough to remember.

"With these cool shoes, you can kiss laces goodbye!" She said, with a kind of announcer tone in her voice.

"Did you hear that on TV?" I asked.
"Do you know what?" She asked.
"No, what?"
"I did, but you know what?" She asked.
"No, What?"
"They were a different color on TV. They were orange, but these are better because they are pink and blue."

"Well those seem like great shoes". I said.

"They are."

I think she was happy about them all day long.

Annabel's Fifth Birthday Party

Although she doesn't actually turn 5 until Friday, Annabel had her 5th birthday part on Suday.

Birthday are a big deal when you are five, so she was very involved with the party from the earliest planning stages. We started talking about it more than a month ago.

Annabel considered various themes, among the early favorites where "Princess" (last year's theme), "Zoo" and "Pirate". She liked the idea of a treasure hunt which seemed to favor pirate. Sometime around that point, it occurred to me that I actually have a skull and crossbones sticker in the garage. I mentioned it to her and she and I agreed would go nicely on a treasure chest.

Then the following week Kristin told me one evening that Annabel had changed her mind and wanted to change the theme to "Butterflies".

"Oh," I remember saying. "What about the treasure hunt?"
"She still wants the treasure hunt," Kristin says. "She wants to hunt for Jewels."
"So its Butterflies and Jewels?" I asked.
"Butterflies and Jewels." Kristin said.

And so it was.

We had the party at home. We got a large inflatable Butterfly Jumpy House for the driveway. Jumpy houses are great. They are like energy sponges. They leave the kids a rare harmless and exhausted state. Often they will fall asleep in the car on the way home from Jumpy parties.



The jumpy arrived at 8:00am and it was a party right away. The thing it HUGE. It was about 15 feet taller than the house and visible from miles around. The girls were jumping around immediately after it was inflated and were in an out of it all day.

Around 10:30, Scott and I (an old friend of mine who was visiting) went out into the backyard to hide buuterflies and jewels in the garden.

The kids arrived around 11:00. After an hour of jumping and pizza, Kristin sat them down on the diveway. It was amazing to watch her actually control a group of 20 kids. She gave them the rules (no running, no pushing) and then let them at it. The kids descended into the yard, picking stuff up as they went. Hidden items outnumbered kids by at least 10:1, so everyone found something.





Then it was upstairs for cupcakes. This was annother Annabel request. She wanted cupcakes instead of a cake. Kristin and Scott spent the better part of the day on Saturday baking them. I can personally attest to their deliciousness.

I was very proud of the way Annabel acted. She was a kind host. She never whined or acted bratty or entitled. I even overheard her at one point checking on Tess, het best friend to make sure that she was having a good time.

She really loved it when we sang happy birthday to her. The look on her face in the picture of her just before blowing out the candles really says it all.

Kristin put up a very thorough photo gallery here. Here are a few other shots.

Hula Hoop Master

We have had a hula hoop sitting around the house for a while now. I think it was a party favor from a recent birthday party. No one ever really played with it until last Thursday when Annabel took an interest.

This video was filmed at our Fourth of July party, which was on Friday. Amazing progress for one day!

On Saturday, we went to the beach and she brought the hula hoop with her. She was the hit of the beach front, entertaining everyone who walked past. She has a variety of arm movements and could even walk around with the hoop still hooping away.

It reminded me of this scene from the Hudsucker Proxy.

Preschool commencement

Annabel's last day of preschool was last Thursday. It looks to have been a festive occasion as you can see from the picture above. She was happy to be able to bring home her cupcake, which she ran to show me when got back from work on Thursday. It's a laminated paper cupcake with "Annabel - July 25th" written on it in black sharpie. I gather each of the kids had one.

Although there were no commencement speakers or caps and gowns, I must say that the milestone was not lost on me. Annabel is growing up quickly. She understands the rules, and she knows how to handle herself in most situations, sometimes in surprising ways.

This last weekend, for example. Kristin was out of town and I had the girls on my own. On Friday night I was surprised to be awakened by the sound of the sink running in the girls bathroom. I got up to investigate and found Annabel there filling her sippy cup up with water from the tap. She had unscrewed the top and set it beside the sink on a small glass shelf.

She looked up as I arrived and saw me standing in the doorway with a surprised look on my face. She explained the situation to me with a shrug.

"I ran out of water." She said.

Feel free to comment

You may not know it but at the bottom of every post there is a link that allows you to add a comment. If more of you posted your comments here instead of giving them to me directly via phone or email, I think it would make for more of a community feeling.

If you are too bashful, you can always post anonymously.

Just FYI.


No pressure.

Birthday Season

We are deep in the throes of the birthday season here. We have had one or two a week for the last few weeks and it looks like it's just heating up. Acrosports seems to be the favorite venue. It's nice because kids can burn off some of their extra energy in a wonderland of kid-oriented gym equipment before they are re-energized with pizza and birthday cake. There are trampolines, trapeze swings, climbing ropes, zip-lines and of course the perennial favorite: The big parachute!

We have had birthdays there back to back for the last few weekends. Since I am completely comfortable with the routine, I volunteered to take the kids to the party there and give Kristin a break. (also, truth be told, I have a soft-spot for the big parachute).

When it was cake time, there was one little girl who couln't have any because her mother doesn't allow her to sugar. I happened to be standing next to the mom and I asked if she has some sort of food allergy.

"No," The mother said "I just don't want to her to have sugar." There was a little indignation in her voice too, as if to say "You mean you don't care if your kids have sugar!?"

Just then one of the other parents who was passing out cake set a piece down in front of the girl. The mom literally swung into action, promptly removing the cake and scolding the parent for being so careless. Needless to say, the little girl was crushed and started crying immediately. Annabel noticed right away and came over to me.

"Why is that girl crying?" she asked.
"Because she can't have any cake." I said.

"Why not?" Annabel Asked.
"Because her mommy doesn't like to her to have sugar, and there is a lot of sugar in cake." I said.

Annabel went back to her seat and ate a few more bites of cake. Then she came back over.

"We need to get a piece of cake to take home for Mommy and Gaby." She said.

"Oh, well I'll bring my piece home and they can share it, I told her."

I don't know exactly what was going on in her mind during those few bites of cake, but I guess it was probably something like "Its sad that that girl can't have cake. I'm glad I can have cake. And then the surprising: Mommy and Gaby would be glad if they can have cake. We should bring them some".

She just has a natural tendency to empathize with people and to imagine their feelings.

Follow up: Last weekend, I had another birthday party. This time, I took Gaby and Annabel stayed with Kristin. As soon as Gaby and I got back, Annabel came running over:

"Did you bring me a piece of cake?!"

Of course it never occurred to me to bring her cake even though I took special note of her empathy the last time.

Clearly, she must get it from her mother...

Those are other books that I made that you can get

Not only is Annabel getting close to reading, but she is also writing. And not just writing her ABCs, as you might expect, but writing complete books.

I wasn't around for the first one, but Kristin says that Annabel came to her and asked for several pieces of paper. She went off and drew pictures on each of the pieces and then she back and said that she had made a book and wanted Kristin to help her put it together. She narrated the words she wanted written on each page and then she punched a hole in the corner and tied it to together with a ribbon.



The back cover is the funniest part. It has 6 little squares on it. Kristin asked her what they were and she said:

"Those are other books that I made that you can get".

She's already learned cross-promotion. I'm so proud.

Since then, she's made several books. I've helped her with a few of them and I can testify that she is very precise about what she wants written. She narrates the text word for word.

Cah Ew Cah EE Es

The big news in Annabel's life is her emerging literacy. She's been getting better with her letters for several months now and Kristin and I both knew that reading was just around the corner.

It's starting to happen now. Yesterday after dinner, Kristin asked "Do you think we should give them some C-O-O-K-I-E-S after dinner?". She spelled out cookies so that you-know-who wouldn't catch on. Annabel immediately jumped in:

"What did you spell?" She asked

Kristin looked over at me. We exchanged amazement and then Kristin said:

"If you can sound it out, I'll tell you" said Kristin.

What followed was an excruciating five minutes that frustrated us as much as it did Annabel as she tried to sound it out letter by letter. Cookies, it turns out, is a rather hard one. Finally, she got to: "Cah" "Ew" "Cah" "EE" "ESS". And with a little help she got the word and everyone had a cookie to celebrate.

For the time being, I think we can still use the tried and true "spell it out" method, but its days are clearly numbered.

An Interview with the Girls

Here are a few minutes of a recent interview I did with the girls. There are a bunch of fun things in there:

First are two of my favorite mispronunciations which might not be around for too much longer, so I'm happy to have them recorded. For Annabel, its "Francescisco" for "San Francisco" and for Gaby its "lellow" for "yellow".

You can also see the big-sister / little-sister dynamic at work with Gaby basically repeating everything that her big sister says.

I also like the distinction that Annabel makes between her "favorite" animal and her "favorite favorite" animal. And then there is Gaby's amazing answer to "What do you want to be when you grow up?"