C-U-T-E-S-T | T-S-E-T-U-C

We could not let this week close without reporting on a moment from this past weekend. Before Saturday's music class, we again stopped by the Mill City Farmer's Market down the street from MacPahil . We were settled in at a table on the Gutherie's patio that was across and underneath the Gold Medal Flour sign on what is presumably one of its old mills, and Fans, if there is a letter about to identify, Our Hero is on it. He started pointing at the letters and reading them backwards in reverse sneaky-snake fashion--i.e. R-U-O-L-F-M-E-D-A-L-D-O-G, and then back again the other way such that working from the top down, gold and flour would be identifiable in isolation; and medal would be recognizable working from the bottom up. It is in this way that you can see that he's got the letters, but hasn't quite yet made the leap to words, unless it is one of which he has memorized the whole shape, like Joe. But the world is full of letters, and he really does have it by a string when he's doing up the letters.

This story, though, is also about Our Birdie. As we have reported here before, Birdie modus operandi is keep up with the big kids. So it wasn't long before she had her little arm and pointed finger extended up toward the Gold Medal Flour sign, bouncing it along in time to nondescript noises, that were clearly intended to be letters in 17-month-old-ese. Brigade, it was the C-U-T-E-S-T (and T-S-E-T-U-C).