Easter Day

Easter was pretty decent. In the days leading up to it, Lily had a friend over for an egg hunt. When they finished, the kids took the eggs and hid them for the grownups to find.

On the big day itself, Lily woke us up at 4 AM, as children are wont to do, and peered out our window, which overlooks the back yard, to see if the Bunny had hidden any eggs yet. He hadn't, so Jen convinced her to go back to bed and when she fell back asleep, went outside to hide the eggs. The neighbor's motion sensor light helpfully shined in her eyes whenever she moved, but she finally got them hidden.

We got another hour or so of fitful slumber before Lily was up for good for the day. She was so eager to find the eggs that she just looked for them in her jammies and didn't change into her nice Easter dress.

Lily with Mrs. Fuzzy at Easter brunch.

This might be our last good year for Easter. She's really ramping up with the questions and I don't think she's going to believe in the Bunny by this time next year. It was a good year. I took a little video of the unveiling of the basket and it's wonderful to see her utterly sincere joy.

One of the things the Bunny got her this year was a collection of Franklin Richards stories. We had visited the comic book store where I used to work and picked up a copy of the first issue and she fell in love with it in the adorably obsessive way only a five-year-old can. (She was quoting the thing verbatim after two readings)

It's really a cute little collection. It recounts the misadventures of Franklin Richards, the son of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, done up in the style of Calvin & Hobbes. Each story is about four or five pages long. Lily's reading has improved prodigiously over the past few weeks. When she was a baby, I was constantly amazed by how as soon as she learned a new skill, she immediately incorporated it into her repertoire. I think that's a pretty universal baby thing and not something specific to her, but she's showing that same facility with reading too. Sometimes, I'll ask her to read something, and she'll look at it intently, and then read it out loud perfectly, having performed the sounding out of the words in her head. She's got a great poker face. I'll watch her while she's doing this and I can't tell how far along she is with it until she actually speaks. (I've got to do this with new material, because she knows the stuff she already has by heart and I can't tell if she's really reading or just reciting.)

It's gotten to the point where Jen and I can't spell things out in front of her any more. And unfortunately, I think she's going to be very bored in kindergarten.

It makes me a little sad and a little proud, all at once, because it seems like reading is the last entirely new skill a person learns. Everything else is an expansion or new application of existing skills.  A Lily who can read is a different person from a Lily who couldn't. But she's going to grow up whether I like it or not, so I'm just going to do my best to help her along the way.