{"id":55,"date":"2005-07-29T12:41:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-29T12:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2005\/07\/29\/happy-as-a-lark\/"},"modified":"2005-07-29T12:41:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-29T12:41:00","slug":"happy-as-a-lark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2005\/07\/29\/happy-as-a-lark\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy as a Lark!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There will be a temporary interruption in Daddy Tales this week. I’ll resume on 8\/8. Sorry for the outage!<\/em><\/p>\n

A big part of our nightly routine with the kids is reading bedtime stories. We started doing this very early on – even before C was old enough to talk. The point back then was to establish a routine and have some quiet time before bed, but it quickly became more than that. I was really surprised at how even the pre-language baby responded to the books, pointing at the pictures and reacting to what we were reading.<\/p>\n

And that surprise gave me an evil plan.<\/p>\n

One of the books we read is called “Quick as a Cricket”. It starts with a picture of a little boy and a cricket and says “I’m quick as a cricket.” Each subsequent page has a different animal on it, with a different phrase (i.e., “brave as a tiger<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

When C was about 16 months old, he was a very good mimic. He picked up words very quickly. So, I started reading “Quick as a Cricket” to him on those evenings and weekend afternoons when J was off working. When we came to the “Happy as a Lark” page, I’d say “Happy as a” and pause looking at him. Then I’d\ufffdpoint to the word “lark” and then say “lark”.<\/p>\n

I also hid the book so that we wouldn’t inadvertently read it at bedtime.<\/p>\n

After 5 or 6 sessions, we were ready.<\/p>\n

We sat down to read our bedtime stories and I pulled out “Quick as a Cricket.” J was sitting on the couch next to me, and C was wedged between us. J was surprised to see the book, saying “oh! I thought we’d lost that one.”<\/p>\n

I smiled and started reading, pointing to each word as I read it. When we got to the target page, I said “Happy as a” and pointed to the word “lark” without saying it. C said “lark” with a definite nod. We kept reading as if nothing odd had happened.<\/p>\n

J just about fell off the couch. “Wait! He’s read – No. He must have recognized the lar – No… Wait! Stop! How’d you do that?”<\/p>\n

C looked up at her “Happy as a Lark, Mama! Happy as a Lark!”<\/p>\n

Heh, heh, heh. It’s good to be the daddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There will be a temporary interruption in Daddy Tales this week. I’ll resume on 8\/8. Sorry for the outage! A big part of our nightly routine with the kids is reading bedtime stories. We started doing this very early on – even before C was old enough to talk. The point back then was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}