Gobsmacked!

I suppose I should tell you about the weekend before I get to the good stuff.

Friday was Father & Son's. Feeling brave, I decided to take Kiril, Misha and Nikolai with me. I figured Kiril could help out with the two wee ones. For the most part, it worked out. We went up Diamond Fork. The weather couldn't have been better. I was perfect.

We got up there a bit after 5 and immediately set up. I hate having to do that stuff later when you are tired and it's dark. So I got the tent up, the pad inflated, sleeping bags laid out. Kiril was running to the car and back, hauling our gear over. His nose started bleeding and so his hands and arms were covered where he had wiped it off. I was almost done, about to lay out the last sleeping bag, when I hear Nikolai start crying. While Kiril had been running back and forth, Misha and Nikolai had kept close, just wandering around the tent. So I sent Kiril over to look. He brought Nikolai over, who was covered in ants. He was crying of course because they were busy biting him.

I spent the next few minutes cleaning them off of him and squashing the little buggers. They were everywhere. In his hair, in his shirt, in his socks, in his diaper. And the little buggers would latch on and not let go. He was crying for about an hour. He would cry and sob "Колучий!" which means pokey or thorny. And "больно!"-- "It hurts". Finally getting him calmed down with food, we were able to settle in and enjoy the rest of the evening.

During the night, Nikolai also got a bloody nose and we woke up with it all over his face, arms, hands, pajamas, and the air mattress. But no one fell in the fire or in the river, so I call it a success.

During the course of the evening, Misha was wandering about doing what Misha does. At one point, he wandered over to where our dinner was, pointed at the bag of food with the word Taco on it and said, "Taco." You may remember that I blogged about something like this recently. I didn't think much of it cause we had been pulling tacos out of the bag.

It kinda nagged at me though, so I decided to do an experiment yesterday. I got a piece of paper and wrote "Taco" on it. I called Misha over and pointed to it and asked him what it said. He said "Taco". As soon as Ira and I managed to get our jaws off of the floor we tried another word. And another. And another. Misha successfully identified: taco, Misha, pizza, cat, dog, Elmo, Dasha, and a few other words. There were some he didn't know but he guessed at.

I am guessing at this point that Misha is seeing the words as pictures. He doesn't know all his letters yet, but he is very good at visual association. I just had no idea he could read. Today "taco", tomorrow Shakespeare!