Amy’s reading and writing skills have really come on in leaps and bounds recently. It’s even got to the point where Kerry and I have had to stop using the devious parenting trick of spelling out contraband conversations when we don’t want her to hear them, as she’s now able to piece together the letters and decipher the words
In an effort to prolong the possibility of a private conversation just a little bit longer we’ve now switched to using NATO’s phonetic alphabet. So for example “Shall we buy some S.W.E.E.T.S” (aka “candy” for the chronically American) has now become “Shall we buy some Sierra Whiskey Echo Echo Tango Sierra”.
This new system is all well and good, aside from the small fact that now I can’t understand what’s being said either. In fact I’m so bad at processing that particular type of information that I’m pretty sure that Amy will come to grips with it before I do. No doubt the time will come when Amy turns to her mother and says “Let’s put Dad’s Uniform Kilo Uniform Lima Echo Lima Echo in the Bravo India November without telling him”.
To illustrate my ineptitude, in order to write that last sentence I had to look at the entry for the phonetic Alphabet on the mighty Wikipedia nine times. Which wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t only ten letters. And three of three of them weren’t repeated twice.
But anyway, as I was saying, Amy’s reading and writing has really come on recently. However she’s not quite at the point where she’s started reading for your own pleasure. All that’s about to change however as, inspired by a recent tweet from Dad Who Writes, I have ordered her a new book for her birthday.
Behold its wondrousness!:
This, combined with the Beano, is the very same book that started me off reading all those years ago and I couldn’t be more ecstatic that it’s still in print. As a child I struggled with reading quite a bit, what with my dyslexia and all. But I can still remember the thrill of sitting engrossed in this hallowed tome, eager to consume every last morsel it contained.
And now I get to pass that enthusiasm and joy on to my daughter.
Of course she’ll probably just throw it into a corner and play with the Nintendo DS we’re also buying her. But a father can dream can’t he?
And just because I can’t pass up an opportunity to post this photo, I should also mention that Amy is the only one of my children that inherits a relic from my childhood. About a year ago I gave Evan Larry, my stuffed sheep that shared my bed from birth all the way through to my late teens:
