What Does That Spell? Awesome

Yesterday Tessa asked me to read her some of my magazine The New Yorker. I made sure to pick out a bit of an article interesting enough to capture her attention for a moment but without any scary references. She kept saying, "These things actually happened?! For real?! They're actually happening?!" I was bursting with pride at her interest. Not actually in the words I was reading or the subject itself (an experiment in reversing a writer's typical formula) but in the idea of non-fiction itself. Here is a historian, I thought. A real journalist. A note-taker of life. She watches the world and us all. Comes up with her own analysis in her own time and presents it without bias (sometimes). She surprises me always. She's dying to learn how to spell everything. She can not see a word without wanting to shout it out letter by letter, ask what it is, what it means. She put magnetic letters together on the fridge yesterday carefully but without really forming words and read me a whole paragraph about responsibility. I love her craving for learning. She cheerleads her own name incessantly, "Give me a T! E! S! S! A! What does that spell?!" Sometimes too incessantly during a three hour car ride. But we find other words to chant. Other sounds to practice. I'm learning how to teach her to read which is incredible. Something I always wondered about. Her spongey brain sucking information out of the air, filing it deep inside. Using it to spit out, "my pleasure" after being thanked for a kind deed. She's still unsure of any kind of bad guys. While reading her strange old fairy tales I omit parts about people or even ogres getting hurt. They cast spells and ward eachother off with magic sand rather than swords. She's certain aliens haven't visited earth and if you start to talk about anything unpleasant she asks you to please not give her nightmares.

Of course, she's a huff-bucket lately too. This new found brain of hers swells and gives her some bad ideas as well. Like the readiness to debate me or Jason at every turn. A politician? No way! She'll always say she wants to be an animal rescuer when she grows up, she even has her own anthem already "I'm strong! I'm brave! I'm wise!" Yes she is.