kitelouise: November 2011

My sister put it nicely as I was gloating about Evas latest accomplishment.' it must be such a privilege to witness a person growing and learning about how things work and why they are a certain way'. Eva has had a personality since she started talking, but is now developing an intellect. A big milestone was when we were off to our friends Sam and Sam, Eva drew a picture to take to them and then wrote 'their' name on the envelope. Her own instigation. I had often sat with Eva and taken her through the alphabet and practised writing letters, and she would not concentrate and easily get frustrated. I made a decision to leave it till school. As her competitive nature demands, I knew she would learn best in a group.
After going through the adventure packed stores from Dahl and Blyton, I think something twigged in little Eva, that she could read these adventures whenever it pleased her. She would memorize stories and hold massive books up and pretend to read. I watched and waited. She has learnt to read a Noddy book that she can make sense of, reading about half the words. She writes endless words, letters, reads the cereal box, draws intricate pictures on aliens in space and fish in the sea, writes musical notes with words in between and gives them to people as songs. The greatest privilege to watch her taking her own initiative to learn.
Along with this comes a new personality from Eva. The phrases ' Pip, you don't know, your too little' 'that's not right', 'I'm busy doing something important,' are often heard. A new one made me laugh, 'why do you get so confused mum?'. Que flashbacks of harassing my mother, now with my new experience as a tired, brain stretched mother.
Eva, thank you for taking me with you on this journey, life is so much fun at the moment. I will do my best to listen to your 16 hour chatterings ( and you do talk in your sleep-sarie!)
and keep up with all the things you want to learn. X