Language Explosion

I just noticed the other day that Will is saying "r"s. It is so strange to hear him saying "car" instead of "caw". He's still hit or miss with it though so sometimes things come out halfway, "Aw we going to do that later?" Paul and I were lamenting just the other day that the end of "babytalk" is near.

It seems like he is always acquiring new vocabulary words but more recently he loves to play around with terms like "passed away" or "misspoke" and "misunderstood". His teacher recently told me that he was explaining to the kids in class about what "passed away" means and he said in a very quiet sad way that "his mom recently passed away."

The process of reading and writing has been fascinating too. Right around his third birthday I noticed that he could put sounds together on the fridge to make just about any simple phonetic word like "cat" or "mom" but the drive just wasn't there for him to go further than that. While I know he was still working on it occasionally, his interest in reading and writing seemed to be underground for much of his third year and then around his fourth birthday he could make it partway through his first easy reader, "Fat Cat". Now at 4 1/2 he can read just about any phonetic word, easy readers, street signs, and whatnot. It seems like all he wants to do is read his little early readers and practice writing things. I'm amazed at it all. It feels like magic to see all this come together and to see how he just seems insatiable lately. Just last week I was thinking to myself that his handwriting is atrocious and then the following week I'm feeling like it is getting more readable.