Boy Genius

I took today off to hang out with Jude. Those who know me know that I don't take off work for anything. However, tomorrow Jeffrey and I will be traveling to the Delta with the Creative Writing students and won't return home until around 10 that night. My mother is going to come through Goodman tomorrow afternoon and keep him until we get back. However, Jude will more than likely fall asleep before we return home, so I was a little bummed that I wouldn't see my baby until the following day. So when Ms. Lily, Jude's baby-sitter, said she wouldn't be able to keep Jude today, I decided I wouldn't look too hard for a replacement.

Despite today's cruddy weather, we had the best time. We ate scrambled eggs and raspberries (Jude's new favorite food) for breakfast, took a walk to the post office to mail off the bills, came home and played trains and bus, then took a ride to Fondren to pick up a painting Jeffrey and I had bought a few weeks back, ate lunch at Quizno's (one of my favorites), shopped at Kroger, took nice long naps, read some stories, played trains and bus again, and ended the day with swimming lessons, tacos, and frozen yogurt. I rocked the whole "Stay at Home Mom" thing like no one's business.

One of Jude's favorite activities is reading stories. That boy loves a book. He might even prefer them to his trains and bus. Now he won't just settle for any book. He has to pick it out. It's been this way since he could crawl. In the last month or two, he's been able to say some of the book titles, or at least his versions of the book titles (For example, "Hop  Pop Pop" for "Hop on Pop" or "Seep Seep" for "Sleep,  Baby, Sleep"). One of his favorite books is the Dr. Seuss classic "Hop on Pop." He could listen to me read that all day. On the page that says "Him, Jim, Jim is after him," it never fails that Jude will explode into giggles. It's been that way since infancy. I really don't know why that particular page gets him so tickled.

Today, however, our ritual "Hop on Pop" reading presented me with a pleasant surprise. After I finished reading it to him, I told him to find me another book to read. He just kept holding "Hop on Pop" instead. Just when I thought to myself, "If I have to read this blasted book one more time..." Jude opened it, and said "Walk Walk." I looked at the page he had opened to, and sure enough, it said "Walk Walk." "Weird," I thought. Then he turned back to the first page and said "Pup," which is actually the first word of the book. Then he flipped some more pages and read "Heeee," which was the first word on that page. Of course, I got into it; I started turning to different pages to see what words he would say, and he would say at least one word on just about every page (except for the end of course--his pronunciations of  "Constantinople and Timbuktu" still need a little more work).

I still can't believe what I saw and heard. My child at 21 months was reading. Of course, he hears that story multiple times a day, so he probably just memorized, but then again, he was turning the pages out of order and still knew what was on them. I didn't know he could do that. So you tell me: Boy Genius, or what?