C-V-S

Elisabeth is into reading signs lately. An example:

E: Cuv-us, mommy, what's cuvus?
Me: Huh?
E: C-V-S --- cuvus!
Me: Oh. CVS. It is a store. We've been there before, that is where I buy medicines and where at least half of your 32 million sheets of stickers have come from.
E: They bring boxes to our house?
Me: No, thats UPS

Today we went to Costco. She read C-o-s-t-c-o and came up with "coast" because the stupid fools who wrote the English language have succeeded in confusing poor kids who are learning to read. Costco ends in a vowel. That makes the first O say its name. And the second O is silent. Or at least that is how she extended the rule of silent E's. She mixed it with when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking. It is neat to watch her work her way through it though.

At Costco, I bought her some of those Brain Quest cards. This afternoon, we did some of the "riddles" as she calls them. The question? "The following sentence is wrong, can you correct it? A leopard cannot change its stripes." Without a moment's hesitation she jumped up and hollered "A ZEBRA! A ZEBRA cannot change its stripes" and immediately launched into her touchdown dance that we've been working on while playing football before bathtime. I thought that was a pretty darn clever answer.

As for football - she really enjoys playing football. We kind of play like college rules overtime. She starts at the five yard line (even with one end of the bed) and one of us stands blocking the goal. We have decided that it isn't fair for us grownups to use our arms to grab her, though, so you have to kind of body block her. She takes off running, uses true Heisman trophy form and tries to get past us. Then she gets to play defense while one of us tries to score. She gets as excited when we score a touchdown as when she does. This game is wildly entertaining.

We've heard one more "knock knock" out of Charlotte. And she appears to call Elisabeth "uhna" which sounds sort of like how tennis announcers pronounce Justine Henin's name (silent H, silent last N, nasal Frenchy accent). When Elisabeth went upstairs yesterday afternoon to "hide" Charlotte looked up the stairs hollering uhna! uhna! And I heard her say it a few more times always in reference to Elisabeth. Time will tell, I suppose, but I love watching her grow!