Lyla is turning two in a couple weeks and I am starting to realize how many things I haven't been writing down about her first two years! Furthermore, in teaching my vocations class to my students, I have been talking about the ways in which we are born with personality traits and proclivities, implanted in us by God, that are clues to what our intended vocation may be. That said, Lyla shares a love of reading that I hold dear to my heart because it is one of her traits through which I most see myself.
For months now Garth and I will suddenly realize it is quiet in our house and quickly go to check on what trouble our apparently busy little girl is into. More and more often, we would find her sitting in the chair in her room reading a book to herself. Turning the pages while saying "At-chi, at-chi, at-chi," Lyla will read book after book for almost a half an hour sometimes (which is the one-year-old equivalent of an entire novel in one sitting).
This habit just undertook a new development that sadly proves Lyla is getting older, and brighter. She now will take a book, "The Bernstein Bears" for instance, and flip through the pages reading, "At-chi, At-chi, bear. At-chi, At-chi, bear." For the book "When You Give a Cat a Cupcake" it is "At-chi, At-chi, cupcake. At-chi, At-chi, cupcake." It is so fun to listen to her voice go from being quiet on one page to a barely controlled scream on the next. Last night Garth and I sat with her on the bed and had an entire conversation while she was reading "When You Give a Cat a Cupcake" to herself next to us. The best part is when she'll laugh at certain pages, or stop to point something out to herself.
She is the cutest little bookworm and I hope her love for reading continues past story books to Harry Potter and then onto Hemingway - at least by the time she is seven. Obviously.
