My Dad reads Will a bedtime story each night. They both love it. Last night, my Dad carried Will up, they stopped into our room to say night-night to Baby Kate and I, and then sat in the family room (right off of our bedroom) to read their story. Will picked “The Lorax.” I could hear their muted voices from where I sat nursing Kate.
Barely a few moments had passed when my Dad called over to me, “Holly, are you hearing this? I am not even believing this!” So Kate and I went to investigate.
My Dad opened to the first page of the story and read:
“At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows…” and paused. And Will piped up:
“…and the wind smells sweet and sour when it blows
and no birds ever sing excepting old crows
is the Street of the Lifted Lorax.”
My Dad turned the page. As if on cue, Will continued:
“And deep in the Grickle-grass, some people say,
if you look deep enough you can still see, today,
where the Lorax once stood
just as long as it could
before somebody lifted the Lorax away…”
Yes. Our son, barely 2 1/2 years old, has memorized “The Lorax.” This is not completely new, as he’s memorized parts of other favorite books (most notably, the “Where’s my Cow” book that he loves to read with Paul). He routinely picks up favorite books to “read” to us where he’ll recite favorite lines as he randomly flips pages, but not word-for-word and start-to-finish. Moreover, Dr. Seuss is supremely more difficult a vernacular to master. And he was getting it practically word for word. And he is 2. (*TWO!*) And he seems to truly know the entire book.
They continued to read the book together. My Dad would read one line and Will would recite the next. It was astounding. I called Paul up to check it out. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long; Paul brought in the video camera and once Will saw the camera, it was basically over. Will began to ham for the camera (doing his best monkey imitation) and wanting to look behind the lense (he is obsessed with cameras). So, we’re working on a system of hiding the camera in the room before storytime to better capture this phenomenal act.
He’s TWO!
Post a Comment