Chicago Reader

Lainey has made amazing progress in her reading over the past few months. We love having her read to us at night, and it's super swell that she can read to Nick when we need them distracted for a bit. Much better than the old iPad crutch (although, in all honesty, that's still our #1 go-to distractor). Although she's been reading pretty fluently since Christmas, I still get surprised by it. Like when we were driving the other day and she asked, "Mom, what's 'Best Buy'?" I was really confused about where the question came from and then realized we just drove past Best Buy. Duh. Or my favorite of this past week:

      E: "What’s ‘sos’?"

     

      M: "Sos?"

      

      E: "Yeah, ‘sos.’ S-O-S. He’s sending it out."

The Police’s “Sending out an S.O.S.” was playing on my itunes. Ha!

Buuuttt...there are some adjustments we need to make given Lainey's newfound literacy. Like, no more spelling out things to talk in code. And definitely no more unchaperoned time with our phones! She likes to send text messages to family members, which is great, but there is no way to filter incoming texts when the phone is in her possession and we definitely get (okay, okay AND send) not-safe-for-kids texts. I learned this the hard way as I listened to Lainey read an R-rated text while the phone was in her hands. Funny thing how those four-letter words are so perfect for early readers to sound out. Oops! She also scrolled through a series between Mark and me and found a conversation about herself. "Hey! Why are you guys talking about me on here?!" Luckily, it was about how she was feeling after a fever scare and not about our research for 5-year-old military academies or what the Easter Bunny needs to pick-up at Target. Close one.

She's growing up fast, this one. You know, I always was a little nervous about moving past the toddler stage. Would it be as fun? Would I still be head over heels once they aren't "cute" anymore? As usual, I had nothing to worry about. She's even more fun and way more interesting. And even as the chubby cheeks and endearing toddler speak fade away, I fall more in love every day.