Sentenced

Seven months ago, Isaac shocked us by teaching himself to write words on his magnadoodle. Today, 6 weeks shy of his 4th birthday, he surprised us again by writing his very first sentence:

"It's my waffle"

Yeah, he got a little creative with the spelling of "waffle," but look closely: He knew to put an apostrophe in "it's"! That's my boy!

His brother also surprised me today, with a sentence of a different sort. See, on Monday I decided to start reading My ABC Bible Verses to the kids. But since they didn't seem too interested in the first entry, I kind of forgot about it for a few days. This morning at breakfast I had them repeat Monday's key verse with me a few times and figured that was that.

But that was not that: As I was serving lunch, Jude looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and confidently recited, "A soft answer turns away wrath." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Just like that, he'd memorized Proverbs 15:1! That's my boy!!

Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of serving a life sentence as mom to these two incredibly precious boys!

Copycat artist

Check out what I found on Isaac's magnadoodle today:

Magnadoodle art by Isaac, 3.5 years old

Don't recognize it? Maybe this will jog your memory:

Believe it or not, Isaac copied the logo from his memory. And here I thought Dahlia was going to be the artist in the family!

Numbers (and letters) guy

During the kids' first semester of preschool, Isaac's occupational therapist worked with him on tracing and imitating various shapes and lines. We saw his fine motor skills improve dramatically, and he's putting those "pre-writing" skills to good use with lots of, well, actual writing!

Yesterday, for example, he brought me his magnadoodle and drew the number 10. He has done this before, so I was getting ready to walk away when he drew an 11 next to it. Okay, easy enough. Then he shocked me by writing a 12, a 13, a 14 ... all the way up to 19! I knew he was doing very well with counting, but I had no idea that he could write every single numeral from 0 to 9!

Isaac writes his numbers on the magnadoodle

I also didn't know that Isaac could write "balloon." I have never instructed him in how to write any letter of the alphabet, yet he is slowly figuring out how to write more and more of them himself. He proudly showed me his new word several times yesterday, and I was lucky enough to catch his excitement on video:



Of course, right now Isaac can still spell much more than he can write, and he shows us his stuff by using his beloved magnetic letters. For example, a couple of Sundays ago he spelled out "god sun" and said, "Mommy, God made the sun!" Turns out that's what the kids learned in Sunday school that morning:

Isaac ponders his Sunday school lesson

We are so proud of Isaac for teaching himself to count, to read, to spell, and to write. Since he is still learning to talk, however, I have started trying to use his abilities to his advantage by writing relevant sentences for him to read (such as "I love you" or "Chase me" or "Can I have that?"). I've noticed that doing so is really helping with his understanding, articulation, and self-expression. We are excited to see how else we can help our boy learn to communicate by using his love of the written word!

Easy writer

Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a writer! In the past few days I've noticed Isaac making different combinations of lines and circles on the magnadoodle, and today I caught him writing an actual word:

d-o-g

He was so proud of himself, writing it over and over to show his abuelitos and his daddy. Here is our little scribe in action:



This boy never ceases to amaze us with the things he manages to teach himself. And his erudite Abuelito Nehiel has even bigger dreams for his namesake: This week my dad started teaching Isaac the Greek alphabet!