The Cat in the Hat

Rory's new favorite book is the Cat in the Hat. He loves, loves, loves the part where everything crashes and the Cat makes a big mess. He gets excited for pages before it happens (see video).



Last night, we were reading the book and somewhere in the first few pages he started running his finger over the words and making sounds as if he were doing the reading (and clearly not paying any attention to my voice, who was actually doing the reading). Then he randomly stopped on a word and said "Cat" very emphatically. So, I thought, perhaps he is trying to figure out which word is "cat". I showed him "cat" and then I showed him "hat" on the page and we spelled out each word. Then I flipped the book to the front cover and showed him again with the big letters on the front. Then I continued reading along without thinking much more about it. Several pages and several minutes later, near the end of the book, he looked at the page we were on, looked over all the words (and there were a lot on this particular page) and he pointed right to "Cat" and said "Cat!". I was SO impressed as you might imagine, so I prompted him for more and said "Can you find 'hat'?" He did his typical thinking sound with his finger running over the page "Hmmmmmmmmm". Then, boy genius that he is, he pointed right to "Hat" in a whole different part of the page from the first "Cat in the Hat" that he had pointed out and said "Hat!". I was so excited that we high fived and then he said "Alright Rory!" because he loves to cheer for himself. Its very cute. So, although I won't be so bold as to call it reading just yet, our smart little guy is actually recognizing words and putting together the concept of letters having meaning beyond just a design on the paper. We couldn't be more proud. :) Of course, the crashing part of the book was still way more exciting to him than the finding "cat" and "hat" on the page...as it should be. Who doesn't love a big crash and a big mess when you're almost 2?!