Reading, Writing, and Plutification

As spring flings itself back and forth between record highs and unusually cold stretches, we have been working out our new family rhythm. The logistics of leaving the house with both babies means that we only do it once a day or so right now. Not that it's impossible or anything, but it takes long enough to get out the door that we do have to do it with some forethought, maneuvering around feeding schedules and whatnot. This, to put it bluntly, kind of sucks for a 4 year old. Thanks to (seriously, really truly thanks to) the incredible help of all 4 grandparents, we have more flexibility for one on one time with Rosemary, who continues to grow and change and crack us up.

Among the biggest changes in the past few months is her interest in writing letters. She loves writing her name just about any place she can and also adores writing notes by sounding out the words and letters. (So far this hasn't translated to an interest in reading yet, which I think she gauges to be a tremendous hassle, but when she's in a patient mind set she's totally capable of sounding out words.) She has written notes to many of you, although usually afterwards she will fold the note into half-quarter-eighth-sixteenths and finally tiny 32nds and then sock it away in an already junk-filled handbag and "put it away" somewhere in her room, making it all but impossible to send them off in the mail.   

Or perhaps she cut your note up into tiny shreds, another favorite pastime.

 

Recently we checked out a kids picture book biography of Helen Keller from the library. We read it again and again, and spent awhile discussing the relationship between the concept of water (pumped onto Helen K's hands by Annie Sullivan) and the physical water itself, language, and all that. Rosemary humored me for awhile and then allowed as how the REAL reason she liked the book was the page that said Helen was a mischievous kid who once cut off all her friend's hair as a prank. R thought this was hilarious. The picture showed Helen K wielding a gigantic pair of scissors toward a little girl who looked (quite reasonably) very, very afraid. 

We've also been reading occasional chapters from Pippi Longstocking, who is great fun and also deliciously mischievous. Frankly she seems the more likely candidate for cutting off a friends hair, although I seem to recall she turns up with a gun at some point in the book - stronger stuff than a pair of scissors. Well, we will take that as it comes. I've been enjoying re-reading it after all these years.  I love that her silliness is linguistically inventive - she calls multiplication "plutification" - and that she is sweetly insubordinate and utterly kind. 

And math! It's interesting to me to see the light bulb go off with as she gets the difference between addition and subtraction, moving from working things out on her fingers toward being able to do it in her head.