Nico can Read!

When Nico turned 2 years old, we noticed he was quite interested with letters and numbers. Hence I printed out big letters and numbers and put them on the kitchen walls to make them familiar to him. A few months later, he learned to sing the ABCs and count up to 20 all by himself. We started reading books to him, and at first he would just be quiet and take it all in. But one day, when I wasn't looking he picked up a familiar book and started to read the words out. Now, that was amazing!

Now that he is about 3 months away from his 3rd birthday, we noticed he can read a few words. Here are some examples that happened recently:

1. I was reading an article on the computer and he wanted to sit on my lap so that he can have a hold of the mouse to get his computer games started. And so to distract him, I pointed to the title of the article I was reading that written in big letters. At first I asked him what the letters were in each word, and he got them all. Next I asked him, 'what does that say?', and then he said "Let ... It ... Go'.

2. While were were inside a shop today looking at beds, he went back to the entrance and started jumping on the welcome mat. I assumed he was trying to find a way out and push the door open, but he stayed there. From a distance, it looked like he was talking to himself. When I came closer I heard him calling out the letters of the word on the mat. At the end of all the letters he paused for a moment and just blurted out ... 'Welcome!'.

3. When we were on the tram, I noticed that just before each stop he would say 'next stop' and would go down the seat as if he was going down from the tram himself. At figured, he was just being restless as usual. But soon I noticed it was just happening too often. He kept pointing to something behind me shouting 'next stop' again and again. And so I looked behind me and there it was a sign that said 'NEXT STOP'. And it would light up whenever people would be going down on the next tram station.

Looks like he is well on his way to reading, even sooner than his big sister. It also worth mentioning that Bianca's love of reading has rubbed off on her little brother. There are even times she would insist on reading the books to him to give me a break. Thank goodness!