Out of the mouth of my babe

A few things Biscuit has said recently:


Biscuit's books: Biscuit loves, loves, LOVES books. We read to him a lot, usually at his request. And every once in a while, he'll say something that makes it evident that we read to him a lot.

Remember how Biscuit scuffed up his face last week? Well, it's healing very nicely, but we've still been telling him not to touch the spot under his nose. He's been really good about it, but it's taken him a while to figure out which parts of his face he COULD touch.

Biscuit explained to me, "Mom, I can touch the side of my nose as much as I want, said Dad."

Not "Dad said I could touch my nose," or even "I can touch my nose Dad said," but exactly as it's often written in his books.


Word association: I've told Jeff that we have to be very careful what we talk about in front of Biscuit because he is all ears and has the memory of an elephant.

He's also getting better at finding the right word for the right situation.

Like when I make him sit down and write a few letters, he used to say, "Mom, writing my letters is bored." Now, he knows that "Writing my letters is borING."

It's the little things.

But sometimes, like the other morning, he'll say something that just tickles us.

Jeff was in the bathroom getting ready, and the hosts of the morning show were having a trivia contest. "Just call in and say the magic word, 'cash,'" the hosts said.

Jeff hollered from the bathroom, "Cash!"

And within a second, Biscuit said, "Register!"

"What? Are you playing $10,000 Pyramid?" I asked Biscuit.

He didn't get why it was so funny, but Jeff and I laughed and laughed. Funny, but that seems to happen a lot.


On walkabout: Biscuit plays superheroes all the time, and you never know which one he is, unless you closely study the props he has - sword, bow and arrow, shield, etc.

Jeff and I were sitting at the table after dinner tonight, and Biscuit came strolling through with a very serious look on his face. He had a bow thrown over his shoulder and had some arrows stuck down in the back of his shirt (when you don't have a quiver, you make do).

As he sauntered through, he used to fingers to make a casual salute, like men would do back when they wore fedoras, and said, "Nice evenin', huh?" and kept right on walking.

I told Jeff that Biscuit could've won an acting award for his portrayal ... even though I'm not really sure which superhero he was.

Our book lover

Biscuit has loved books ever since he got here. Of course, that could be because Jeff and I are both word people or because we've been reading to him since he got here.

But right now, it's hard to figure out which books to tackle.

At day care, Biscuit is learning sight words. You know how every few years the way kids are taught things changes? Well, they don't do phonics as much anymore, which is how we learned to read. Now, they start with sight words, which is a list of about 100 words that the kids tackle a few at a time. It seems to me more like a memorization process, but by building a few at at time, Biscuit has had good retention of the words.

This week's words are: am, can, I, the.

To help Biscuit, I wrote them on his chalkboard easel. So he sees the words every time he walks from the kitchen to the living room.

The only problem with this week's words is that Jeff has found a sentence in them. So now, we're all three walking around the house, and in very weird voices, saying, "I am the can."

Have you ever seen actors repeat lines over and over with the stress on different words?

"I AM the can."
"I am THE can."
"I am the CAN."

Yeah, we're silly, silly people. But it makes Biscuit laugh, and it's helping him learn his words.

But back to books.

As far as stories go, Biscuit is enjoying chapter books, especially the Magic Tree House series, in which a young boy and a young girl can time travel in a tree house they found in the woods. They have adventures with knights in Medieval times. They meet up with some pirates who are looking for treasure. They take a journey with some dolphins in the ocean. Just all kinds of fun stories.

But since he's learning words, he also enjoys looking at some of the simpler books he has, trying to find the sight words he's learned to far.

So we're trying to embrace both sides. We read him chapter books and let him show off his new skills with the easy books. Win-win.