Your Baby Can Read?

An old picture, but one that shows how much Ben
loves Evie. He asks to see her weekly. It sounds like,
"E-He Houk? E-He Houk?" That means, "Hey
Mom, can I play with Evie at her house today?"

Ben may or may not have read his first word today. We went to Toddler Time at the Mid-Continent Library and Benny picked out Evie's name tag. Twice.

Side Note: This is a favorite Thursday activity with Miss Jean whom Ben simply calls "Jean". It seems kind of rude when he marches up to her, hands her a book to check out and says, "Here Jean." Luckily, she is a true librarian and simply thrilled that kids want to check out books. She probably wouldn't care if he called her "Jim".

In any case, the library provides apple-shaped name tags for the kids to wear. During class, a teacher comes around and gives each child in attendance a sticker for their name tag. Last week, Ben got apples and Evie received strawberries. Then they both examined the other's tag.

This week, Evie wasn't there, but Ben went up to the table with approximately 15 unclaimed name tags, picked up Evie's and said, "E-He."

I brushed it off, "Yeah, good guess that is Evie's name tag."

Then he did it again. I asked him, "How do you know that's Evie's name tag?"

Of course he didn't answer me. I'm sure partly on principle (It's not cool to answer your mom's questions - just ask Dad.) and partly because he can't.

Seriously, he calls Evie "E-He". And this is an improvement. I'm just grateful he stopped calling her "Wee Wee". People would ask, "What did he say?"

"Ha ha. I'm not sure. I didn't hear him." All the while I'm thinking: Please don't say that again, because BTW, you also call your business 'wee wee'.

I'm not sure if he recognized the letters, the strawberry sticker or the combination, but something looked familiar and he knew it belonged to his friend. So, Congratulations Benny! You read your first word today! It seems appropriate that you did it at the library - Miss Jean will be thrilled.

Update: It's come to my attention, that I should include the rest of the this story. To test Ben, I took two index cards and wrote his name on one and Evie's on the other. I handed him Evie's and asked him to read it. He studied the card carefully, furrowed his brow and said, "Uhhh... licka, licka, licka, licka."

I think that means he cannot "read". However, he's starting to recognize words he's seen before. He keeps bringing me these cards saying, "E-He. Bean!"