F - L - Y

that was nate's first word. not the first word he said, but the first word he READ.

this morning, as we were getting ready to take him to pre-school, he was looking at an old toy catalog. on the front, sort of in the background of the main picture, is a toy that says FLY on the front of it. without a lick of help from me (or me even realizing what he was doing until it was all over with) he sounded out each letter (ffff lllllll yyyyyyy) and said the word. i had to look at the catalog to see what he was talking about, but sure enough, there it was. fly.

neither jeff nor i have any recollection of having read that to nate in all the months he has had it (since the xmas season). we do know that he might be able to sight read 'fly' because he watches Word World (love that show! PBS) and they have a fly flying around, and we read The Diary of a Fly. but this wasn't the same as him reading something in a book we've read before. he can nearly recite entire books to us that way. and it wasn't the same as him reading a word where the letters of the word make the shape of the object, which is the whole premise behind Word World. this was him sitting down, sounding out each letter, and putting all the sounds together.

immediately after FLY he went to a box in the living room and tried to do it again with a longer word (FLEXA--the boxes for his bunk are all over the house right now), but couldn't. he can pretty much always sound out each letter, but with longer words by the time he gets to the last sound, he's forgotten what the first sound was so he can't ever really put them all together.

so there you go, our son (not quite 3 1/2 years old) is starting to read. i'm excited and extremely proud. but i'm a little bit freaked out. it's great, but come on! he just, and i mean JUST, figured out the potty! i guess i shouldn't be surprised. jeff learned to read, pretty much unassisted, at a very early age, too--actually at about the same age, if i remember correctly.