perching bookworms

Tonight Joel is away at an event for work, so I put the girls to bed by myself. We had a long afternoon (Larkin is starting to drop her only nap--so the afternoons can be VERY long!) and I was more than ready to get them tucked in their beds! We settled into Willa's reading chair-Larkin always sits on the arm of the chair, and Willa sits in my lap while we read. As soon as we got comfortable I realized that we didn't have Mr. Duck (Willa can't sleep without him). Willa jumped off my lap and said, "Wait here guys! I go get duck. I be right back!"

She looked for a few minutes, contstantly yelling, "Wait here guys! I get 'em!" but of course she had no idea where he was (he always seems to go into hiding at bedtime!!!). I convinced her to let me look, and she ended up running back to her room. Once I finally found him (stuffed in the dollhouse) I came back and found BOTH of them perched on the arms of the chair "reading." The first words out of Willa's mouth were, "I won't fall down! I'm okay!" I trusted her just long enough to go grab my camera.

Willa's face: "Can't you see I'm busy?"

Larkin loved reading this animal book because there's one word under each picture-so she likes to point to the word and say the name of the animal and "read" the book! Just in the past month or so she has taken off with her pre-literacy skills:
-loves to clap and count syllables
-counts words in a sentence
-notices what sounds words start with ("hey, potato starts with /p/!!")
-wants to know what letter everyone's name starts with, and then she tries to figure out what sound that makes by saying the word very slowly
-carries around paper and pencil a lot to write "messages"