Henry just said good night to Delia and it’s the new Cutest Thing I’ve Ever Heard.  It just bested the last Cutest Thing I’ve Ever Heard which had a good 3 day run at the top: “Appoo    Pie”.

Delia’s almost five and a half as I write this.

In the past few weeks, she’s started reading a lot.  It started out as reading a word here and there, mostly in video games.  Then it expanded into two and three word phrases.  She never really liked sounding words out even though she could do it pretty well.  She just wanted to know the word right away (who wouldn’t?), and still does.  She got to a point, though, where she knew enough words by sight that she could make sense of pretty much everything she wanted to read, and that gave her a huge confidence boost.  Now she will spend more time figuring out words in her head so she can read lots and lots and lots — but she will be the first to tell you she can’t read everything, not everything at all!  She loves reading things around her – food packages, signs, bits of our emails or chats, her own emails.   Ryan and I aren’t used to it at all and are completely amazed by what she reads at least once a day.

We recently upgraded her computer, and since our Christmas travels she’s been using my computer a lot too.  She plays a lot of games online – Webkinz, some Pixie Hollow and Bella Sara and lots of little mini flash games she finds on this site.  With her reading/typing skills, she will see a word on TV or somewhere else and type it into a browser to see if it’s a web site.  For instance, she’s done that with “starwars.com” and “barbie.com” and lots of others.  One day when she was typing in things like “delia.com” and “eli.com” and other semi-random ideas… we realized it’s time to put some parental controls on her browser for safety!

Among the mostly princess/flower/heart/rainbow themed pictures she draws, we’ll occasionally get  something Star Wars or solar system inspired.  Today she drew a great “Ballerina Bear” and last night it was a map a la Dora the Explorer drawn from memory.  She mostly likes to draw, and doesn’t color in very much.  She does usually color in when she’s working with paints.

She and Henry play together pretty well.  It invariably turns into physical play, which often turns into rough physical play.  They barely ever get hurt, but gosh it’s frustrating when they’re flinging each other around or jumping onto each other.  It’s a little less worrisome since Henry is solidly built (an understatement) but still… A lot of the time it’s easier to not watch!

Delia keeps us on our toes with her questions about everything.  We look stuff up in books we have or on the internet.  It’ll be a few more months until Henry is safe at the library – how he is now we’d be picking books up behind him the whole time.  It’s easier to keep his destruction at home these days.  We watch a lot of TV with great info, too.  She seems to gobble up tons of information very quickly, then takes a break and concentrates on other things – sometimes more physical or more playful pursuits.

She quit ice skating lessons right after Christmas.  She wasn’t enjoying the classes at all this year.  She went several times when she didn’t want to – trying it “one more time” but it just wasn’t fun for her.  She still loves skating and will try lessons again – maybe next year or the year after.

A story from the other night…  I was packing orders and Delia wanted to help.  She helps a few times a month, so we’ve got a routine.  I tell her what I need and she gets it, then we pack it in a box or mailer and she writes the order number on the outside.  Sometimes it’s pretty boring so she gets creative…  She decided she’d write up her own packing slip and “make an order.”  I gave her a piece of scrap paper and she asked me to spell the following words “need” “blue” “bright bots” “large”  She handed me the packing slip which said “I NEEDBLUEBRIGHTBOTSLARGE” and I folded it up and handed it back to  her with a pair of large blue Bright Bots.  Then she sheepishly told me she really wanted to keep them, but she couldn’t buy them!  I asked her why she wanted them, and she said to put on Tommy, our 18-month old sized mannequin.  I told her she could have them to put on Tommy.  She said, Oh wait, and got a piece of green construction paper and started to work with scissors and a pen.  I had finished what I needed to by this point, so I moved back to the kitchen/living room.  She brought me a $1000 dollar bill and said “Here! for the bright bots! your own ten thousand dollar bill!”  I thanked her and told her it was one thousand, so she said “Want me to make it ten thousand?”  She took it and added a 0 to each corner, making each $1000 into $10000    Later she asked if we could really spend it and was sad when I told her unfortunately, no, not in real life.

     

Henry has become quite the talker.  He has lots of words and says them clearly enough for us to understand him, and for other people to understand him too with a few of them.  We came up with a list:

cocoa
apple
woof – also his word for dog
fish
nurse
shoes
hat
up – he says this when he wants us to get up off the couch or out of bed

all done
uh-oh
pop-tart
Caillou (tv show)
Ki Lan (tv show)
Thank You
Please
Help
Stuck
crocodile
truck
tractor
airplane
outside
downstairs
mommy
daddy
vroom
quack quack
chicken
horse
delia
Shirt
Moon
egg
caterpillar
Trapeeze
All done
I do – Henry, do you want to play catch?  I DO!

Another fun one is “tickle”.  He runs up and tickles us and says “tig tig tig tig tig”.
He understands almost everything we say.  It’s really fun to be able to talk to him so much.  He likes to play with Delia’s old sticker book.  It’s just a bunch of pictures with the words for the object under them.  He can point out almost all of them, and for quite a few, you can point and he’ll say the word.