I'd like to buy a vowel

Letters are all the rage around here lately. Owen wants to know how to spell EVERYTHING. He can now read and type a few dozen words, and is working on sounding out new ones. Notably, he has quickly learned that vowels are almost completely unreliable in English, and when he tries to spell new words he often does so without any vowels at all. Sometimes he likes to leave out all but the first and last letters, like the other day when he told me (out of the blue) that "D R spells dinner," and then, "D S spells dinners."

Watching Owen learn to read and write provides remarkable insights into how his brain works. For example, he likes to write his name with crayons, and he is great at it. He's not showing a clear handedness yet, and will use both hands to write. But more than once, we've seen him write his name perfectly with his right hand, then put down the crayon, pick it back up with his left hand, and then write his name again - in equally perfect, mirror image.

One of my favorite motherhood moments happened about a month ago. I heard Owen call out from the back seat of the car, "O-P-E-N. It says OPEN," as we drove past a store that did, indeed, have an OPEN sign in the window. This was his first act of spontaneous reading, and I was about to congratulate him on his newfound skill when he added, "and N-E-P-O spells CLOSED." I ended up apologizing to him that the world wasn't as sensible as he was - and wishing that it were.

Zoe, not to be outdone, has recently started saying consonants. She spends a lot of time saying something that sounds like "Hi, cookie!"

Gross motor skills

I'm constantly amazed at how proud I am of both Owen and Zoe when they do new things. My pride is continuously recalibrated to their level, whether they accomplish new feats ahead of, or even behind, "schedule." Lately both of them have been making great strides in their gross motor skills (not generally a forte in our family!)

Owen has been climbing like crazy at the playground:

and Zoe is getting really good at holding up her head:

Look out world, here come the Orglets!

Portraits of the Orglets as young children