Tuesday, August 04, 2009

There's a new writer in da house!

Somebody pinch me. Or, wait a minute. Don't pinch me. Not yet. First, allow me to dream of MENSA memberships, graduation from Yale and the discovery of a cure for AIDS, or something.

My son, who is 22 months old, wrote his first word today. His VERY. FIRST. WORD! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!


Jennifer has been "helping" her little brother express his creative side with crayons and colored pencils. We always monitor him when he "draws" a picture that is actually a bunch of squiggly lines and stuff. Just to make sure he doesn't try to eat the crayons or shove them up his nose.


One thing Jennifer has is a Doodle Pro with an attached writing tool on it. It's the kind you can erase pictures on. It looks like this:



She has that one and a bigger, fancier one. Anyway, Jesse has been using that, too, in his exploration of his creative side. In addition to an Etch-A-Sketch. But he was doodling on that one today. And...somehow or another...DO NOT ask me how...he wrote the word "DAD"!!! In all capitals letters!

My husband saw this. He had this baffled look on his face as he showed it to me.

At first, I teased him. "You did that!" I joked.


"No, I didn't."


"Oh, come on. That was you," I teased.


He grew very serious, like I was accusing him of lying or something. "No, it wasn't."

"Then you HELPED him do that!" I teasingly accused.


"He just did it by himself!" he protested.

I froze. No way. NO. WAY!
"Oh, my God," I said. "He REALLY wrote that??"

Husband shrugged. "He just drew something that looks like the word 'dad'."


Oh, sure, hubby. And I just "drew" something that you can actually read in a book.

But I did not see it as some accident. I saw it as a real, actual word that my son wrote. The way I see it, he wrote the word "dad"! Maybe he can't read that word (or can he??) and maybe he doesn't understand that he WROTE a word. But you know what? In my eyes, he wrote his first word! My 22-month-old son wrote his very first word! Yay!

My celebration was short-lived, though. I wanted to take a picture of this moment. To cherish it. To fantasize about what a GENIUS he will grow up to be. To send it to EVERYBODY in the family so that they can go "wow" about it, too!

But I can't do that now.

Because my husband ERASED IT! GAH!!!


Oh, well. Jesse has been playing around with that thing all day. Here's hoping that we'll get a repeat. If we're lucky, he'll write "mom" next.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Dawn Wilson said...

Thank you. :) I think so, too.

Anonymous said...

wow! definitely another author in the family!
I dont remember how old my kids were when they wrote words...over 2 yrs old for sure!

You know I saw on tv a program to teach BABIES to read and they had a bunch of kids on there reading little words, and a few long ones too so I do think its possible. Jen probably did it, if she's been working with him! Good job little teacher Jen! And good job student Jesse!

Dawn Wilson said...

I have to agree. :) Jennifer was 3 when she wrote her first word: Love.

I've seen that commercial. I'm a little doubtful about if that stuff actually works. And if it would work for EVERY young child. Still, doesn't hurt to consider trying it.