Rex wants to be three and Fay wants to read!

Its hard to be a second child. I should know. :) Rex seems be to suffering from a case of the want-to-be-three-s. He has never been fond of tummy time. He cries almost immediately, and from about 4 months on, I've given up on forcing him to have tummy time. Instead, I have propped him in a sitting position. Now he can pretty much sit on his own, so he can play contently for spells at a time. But lately, he has become unsatisfied with just sitting and playing. He will whine and complain until I come over and when I reach for him, he arches his back and stiffens his legs and desperately tries to stand up. So if you support him and help him stand, THEN he wants to walk. He doesn't have much leg control, so he sorta twitches his little feet forward. And at this point you should see the smile on his face. He is just so tickled to be "walking". He is a big boy, and just like his sister.

I was happy to help Rex walk for a while because it was so cute and seemed so ambitious. In little time, it became back-breaking and tiring. But now that he has experienced the thrill of walking he is totally unsatisfied just sitting.

Luckily, my mom came to visit last weekend and she was not happy with the idea of a baby that wouldn't crawl and hasn't rolled over. (I told her I'd read that some babies go straight to walking without crawling). So she looked up some exercises and started rolling Rex around on the floor with his blanket. He got a lot more tummy time this weekend, and I think he is starting to be ok with it again. So, I will try to keep it up.

Fay may have read her first word last week! I know her teacher works on identifying letters and teaching their sounds. But I'm not sure they have really worked on linking letters together to sound out words. So I may be reaching a bit on thinking Fay "read" a word. But I have to write down what I saw because it was just so exciting!

Fay and I were standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus after school. She looked up at the store behind us and said "O"..."Ooop"..."OopN". I just about fell down. I said "Fay are you reading?!" She said "Mommy what is that word?". I said "Open!" She said "No, it says closed!". Always a smart aleck. She gets that from her dad. Then I gave her a huge hug and told her how proud I was that she is reading.

I told Fay's teacher about it the next day and she was cautious to believe Fay was reading....saying that perhaps she remembered the word from class...more of a memorization than sounding out. Seems possible. But I don't really care. It was really fun to be there at the moment of her first read word!