Sophie walked toward me and tried, without much success, to suppress her grin. Gesturing with her hands in excitement, she yelled “Mom!” several times as she approached the dining room table where I was sitting.
“I finished Harry Potter! I finished it! I can’t believe I finished it!”
They had wiped their plates clean. All that remained were some stray vegetables and small bones.
“Did you like the meat, girls?” Papa asked. They nodded their assent. In the seconds that followed, I looked up at my husband and attempted to use our finely tuned marital ESP to convey a warning to him. “Do not say anything more on the subject,” I said with my eyes.
Where are all the cars? We’ve driven hundreds of miles since leaving Las Vegas eight days ago. Yet despite the fact that summer is the busiest time of year for the national parks we’ve visited, the lack of traffic on the roads is astounding. Actually, my use of the word “traffic” here is entirely misleading. Because there is NO traffic, at least not in the “Cross-Bronx-Expressway-is-a-parking-lot-with-bumper-to-bumper-traffic-again-They-should-just-bomb-this-road-into-oblivion” way. We arrived in Moab today and it has the first traffic lights we’ve seen since Las Vegas on July 6. I am not lying.
Continue reading Adventures & Misadventures, Part II – Bryce Canyon & Cedar Breaks National Monument
Chloe and I are off to London tomorrow evening, our first vacation as a mother-daughter team. I have been anticipating this moment since our babies were born, hoping that someday I’d be fortunate enough to travel with them one-on-one when they were old enough to enjoy and appreciate it.
Sophie has never really loved to read on her own. She’s never had the patience or the desire to attempt any tome without illustrations (the artist in her enjoys graphic novels) unless we’re the ones reading to her. This, of course, is in startling contrast to her sister, who was reading lengthy chapter books at six years old.
But we all march to the beat of our own drummers, and Sophie is no different. She takes her time. She’s deliberate without being a perfectionist. She’s a creator and a bit of a scientist. She’s a fashionista. And although she’s reluctantly read several books since the start of the school year for her language arts class, the other day she officially joined the ranks of children everywhere who have conquered their first big-kid, several-hundred-page-long novel.
And in Sophie’s case, that several-hundred-page-long novel was not Harry Potter. On Sunday night, she came running into the TV room, giddy with excitement. She was jumping up and down, screaming, “I finished it! I finished it!” The novel in question, The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer (yes, of “Glee” fame), held her in rapt attention for three weeks as she slowly absorbed a 438-page story about twins who enter a land inhabited by their favorite fairy tale characters.
Sophie was extremely proud of her accomplishment. For the first time ever, she read and read and read. Some evenings, she’d read for 90 minutes straight. No TV, no video games. Just the book. For a kid who used to moan and groan if she had to read for 15 minutes, this was momentous. And to hear her laugh as she read a funny passage was priceless.
I don’t think that Sophie will necessarily become as fervent a reader as Chloe. But she’s enthusiastically started her next novel, “Flora & Ulysses” by Kate DiCamillo, and in between critical commentaries about the book jumping around a little too much, her laughter is ringing through the house all over again. And that’s music to this mom’s ears.
Tomorrow is Chloe’s birthday and it’s hard to believe she will be 12 years old. Sophie and I asked Chloe a series of questions about her upcoming birthday:
We heard the patter of not-so-little feet last night at 10 pm. As they made their way down the stairs, we knew it was Chloe. She approached us with a bittersweet smile on her face and asked “Can I stay up to finish Harry Potter? Please? Please?” She had made it to the epilogue of the final tome – how could we say no?
