Learning to Read

I've been ligging around the couch for the past three months, so extraordinarily tired and a bit ill.  Poor Violet, on the days when she's not in preschool, or doing ballet or soccer, she's stuck at home with her slug mom.  

But little people tend to be resourceful.  Yesterday she built a juicer out of tupperware, and I am constantly waking up from my couch naps to find tiny versions of Hawaii built out of legos and old popsicle sticks.
And when I'm awake, she sits with me in my big pile of cats, and blankets-- and we read.
We've been reading a lot.
We've been reading so very much, that she is now reading to me most of the time.
On good days, she takes my hand and pulls me up the road, past the troll, to the Fremont library to check out new "I Can Read Books", and then we bring them home and she devours them, along with juice and goldfish crackers.

I love to watch her face as she works out the words, the little sprockets in her head churning out all these sounds- "apple" and "puppy" and "time"-- with a little mumble to herself that the e at the end makes the i say it's name.  
It's so incredibly amazing.

Tiny little squirt, standing at the party with the Romans and Shakespeare, and Charlotte Bronte.  All the great readers and writers of the world, here comes my girl.  Smarty pants.
I'm a proud mommy.