Little Abigail
I spent the past few days at the Shaver cottage for the annual Friends-of-Jen-and-Chad-crummy-cold-weather-but-lots-of-warm-drinkin’-fun-and-trash-talk weekend. Between dim sum and bugger-your-neighbour card games and too much wine, I got some one-on-one bonding time with Abigail Shaver (the littlest one, but arguably with the largest presence). We did all the usual things: We made domino houses and drew pictures of animals with tracings of our hands and we sang songs about yogurt and we watched some Dora and Diego. And Craigy and Julie had just bought Abby a new book about a boy who wanted to catch a star of his very own. It was obvious that Abby really enjoyed the book. She made each and every person she could sucker into it, read it to her over and over and over. It had nice painted illustrations and a very sweet story-line. Some of the sentence structures were fairly complex and some of the words weren’t used in everyday Canadian English, like “jetty” and “petrol”. But none of it was too complex for our little Abigail. She just loved the book.
Then, this morning, we were just hanging around, chilling, before heading back home. And Abby asked if we could read the book together (keep in mind, she’s not even three year’s old yet, but she has a fairly extensive vocabulary and is QUITE articulate about what she wants). So I said sure, and took the book into my lap. Then she frowned at me and clarified that SHE wanted to read to ME. I shrugged and handed her the book. No harm in just letting her babble away to herself.
But that little girl took the book on her lap, she cupped the spine in one hand so she could turn pages with the other, took a deep breath and began to read. Well, she can’t exactly read. She’s only two years old. But she recited page by page, word for word, each and every line of that whole story book. She even inserted emphasis and emotion into her story telling. She paused at the right parts, like between “he waited…….and he waited…..and he waited”. She said lines like “but he couldn’t take his spaceship because it was all out of petrol from last Tuesday when he’d taken a trip to the moon” and “The star washed up on the bright, golden sand”. She didn’t make any mistakes. She didn’t skip any details. Even a page that had four detailed sentences on it, even THAT she read in order and without skipping a word. I was incredibly impressed and I gave her hugs and praise after she finished.
Later, upstairs in her bedroom, she let me crawl onto the bed with her to read her books. I read her about three or four, then laid down (exhausted from the events of the previous two nights). She laid a blanket over me and told me she would read to me. I asked, “May I close my eyes to rest?” and she said I could. She even moved the books that I was half lying on, so I could be more comfortable. And she read me the Robert Munsch book “I’ll Love you for Always”. At one point, I looked up at this animated little blonde jewel that was story-telling like the best of them with all the passion and drama and poise of any counterpart ten times her age, and I began to feel a little bit weepy. I had to work hard not to let a tear squeeze out. My little Abby, I thought. I had held her when she was just an infant. She’d fallen asleep in my arms before she was able to speak or walk. We’d built castles out of empty cardboard boxes together. We’d invented stories about butterflies and princesses together. I’d prepped her on how to walk down an aisle as a flower girl and I’d positively reinforced the peeing on the potty drill. And now she was at a point where SHE could read ME a goddam story. She was sharing her blanket with me and tucking me in. As close to tears with pride as I felt, I couldn’t even fathom what special little moments Jen and Chad must have.
I spent the past few days at the Shaver cottage for the annual Friends-of-Jen-and-Chad-crummy-cold-weather-but-lots-of-warm-drinkin’-fun-and-trash-talk weekend. Between dim sum and bugger-your-neighbour card games and too much wine, I got some one-on-one bonding time with Abigail Shaver (the littlest one, but arguably with the largest presence). We did all the usual things: We made domino houses and drew pictures of animals with tracings of our hands and we sang songs about yogurt and we watched some Dora and Diego. And Craigy and Julie had just bought Abby a new book about a boy who wanted to catch a star of his very own. It was obvious that Abby really enjoyed the book. She made each and every person she could sucker into it, read it to her over and over and over. It had nice painted illustrations and a very sweet story-line. Some of the sentence structures were fairly complex and some of the words weren’t used in everyday Canadian English, like “jetty” and “petrol”. But none of it was too complex for our little Abigail. She just loved the book.
Then, this morning, we were just hanging around, chilling, before heading back home. And Abby asked if we could read the book together (keep in mind, she’s not even three year’s old yet, but she has a fairly extensive vocabulary and is QUITE articulate about what she wants). So I said sure, and took the book into my lap. Then she frowned at me and clarified that SHE wanted to read to ME. I shrugged and handed her the book. No harm in just letting her babble away to herself.
But that little girl took the book on her lap, she cupped the spine in one hand so she could turn pages with the other, took a deep breath and began to read. Well, she can’t exactly read. She’s only two years old. But she recited page by page, word for word, each and every line of that whole story book. She even inserted emphasis and emotion into her story telling. She paused at the right parts, like between “he waited…….and he waited…..and he waited”. She said lines like “but he couldn’t take his spaceship because it was all out of petrol from last Tuesday when he’d taken a trip to the moon” and “The star washed up on the bright, golden sand”. She didn’t make any mistakes. She didn’t skip any details. Even a page that had four detailed sentences on it, even THAT she read in order and without skipping a word. I was incredibly impressed and I gave her hugs and praise after she finished.
Later, upstairs in her bedroom, she let me crawl onto the bed with her to read her books. I read her about three or four, then laid down (exhausted from the events of the previous two nights). She laid a blanket over me and told me she would read to me. I asked, “May I close my eyes to rest?” and she said I could. She even moved the books that I was half lying on, so I could be more comfortable. And she read me the Robert Munsch book “I’ll Love you for Always”. At one point, I looked up at this animated little blonde jewel that was story-telling like the best of them with all the passion and drama and poise of any counterpart ten times her age, and I began to feel a little bit weepy. I had to work hard not to let a tear squeeze out. My little Abby, I thought. I had held her when she was just an infant. She’d fallen asleep in my arms before she was able to speak or walk. We’d built castles out of empty cardboard boxes together. We’d invented stories about butterflies and princesses together. I’d prepped her on how to walk down an aisle as a flower girl and I’d positively reinforced the peeing on the potty drill. And now she was at a point where SHE could read ME a goddam story. She was sharing her blanket with me and tucking me in. As close to tears with pride as I felt, I couldn’t even fathom what special little moments Jen and Chad must have.
Little Abigail is getting less so.
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