About a week ago, Tori’s teacher told me that they’d started working with her on her writing. I was surprised, but when I saw her awkward scrawl tracing the letters of her name, I couldn’t help but beam with pride.
Not exactly calligraphy, but definitely a start.
However, I assumed it would be months before she was ready to write on her own. Months.
So when she picked up her crayons and started drawing on her easel, I didn’t pay much attention when she said, “Mommy, I’m writing my name!”
In fact, I think I said something like, “that’s nice, dear,” before returning my focus to the serious reading I was doing (about witches and vampires in Washington D.C.).
But when I heard her frantic scribbling grow quiet, I looked up (mostly to make sure she wasn’t drawing on the wall or something).
There she stood, her two-year-old forehead wrinkled in concentration, slowly drawing out the letters of her name.
“T….oooooo….rrrrrr….iiii,” she murmured to herself as she worked.
“Look, mommy, Tori!”
And it was. I could actually make out the letters. Still, I thought it must be a fluke.
“I see that. Great job! Can you do it again?” I was sure that she couldn’t.
But she turned back to her easel and promptly began again.
The T looked like a capital T. The O looked like an o. The r was a little shaky, but still an r. And the i was unmistakable, complete with the finishing dot.
Sure, she wrote it vertically, not horizontally, but there it was. Her name. In print.
“Wow. You can write your name! Great job, honey,” I said, frankly astounded.
My next instinct, of course, was to grab the camera (that’s what we mom bloggers do, yes?). But before I could get my phone unlocked and ready to shoot, she was already scrawling over her masterpiece with a glittery crayon, and topping it off with a dinosaur sticker.
My proof of her budding literary genius disappeared.
But I know what I saw. My kid wrote her name.
She still wears diapers, but she can write her name.
I think Keanu Reeves summed it up best back in the day of Bill and Ted:
Exactly.
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