Day: August 25, 2006

Leilani Reads a Book

By herself!

The title should really be Leilani “reads” a “book” but I’m still really proud of her. I put her in the playpen to wash dishes this morning, and then I hear her making the sound she makes for cat. When I turned around to look, she had her cloth book open to the pages with drawings of a dog and cat. I later recreated the scene for this picture:


Leilani in her playpen

It’s incredible how fast she can learn things. A few weeks ago, she started doing a purring noise whenever she saw one of our cats. Mommy had told her that cats meow and purr, and she picked up on the prrrrr sound because it’s one she can make (with tongue flapping against the roof of her mouth). Then last week she started doing a panting noise for dog, and we’re not sure how she picked that up, maybe from the neighbor’s dog panting in her face whenever we help her pet him.

These two noises have become her associations with the animals, and we started pointing out and naming dogs and cats in her books, prompting her for the noise. So when she sees the familiar pictures or drawings of dogs and cats, she now makes the noise by herself. But this was the first time she opened a book by herself to those pictures, and made the noise all by herself, without any prompting or pointing. So she was essentially reading the book.

PS: This is the last post for a week, we’re off to the Big Island in 2 hours–Leilani’s first airplane ride.