Tonight Everett read us a book for the first time. The book he chose was My Friend is Sad, featuring Piggie and Elephant. Melissa and Chris listened carefully while Teddy and Gwen rolled around on the bed. Recently Everett has been seemed very motivated to learn to read, and has been spontaneously reading things that we see around the house and in public. He has been a bit confused about acronyms and slang, but this is to be expected. He has also been a bit confused about the idiosyncrasies of English but this is also to be expected, especially for a language that has borrowed so liberally from many other languages.

Everett also informed us that today has been the most exciting day of his life because he got to climb the ladder to the attic. To put this in perspective, we insulated the attic a couple years ago and Chris put in a ladder to make it accessible. Since then we have used it for storage. Each time Chris goes up there Everett wants to know if he can come with. The answer to this has always been no. This was made easier by the fact that Melissa wasn’t allowed up there either (climbing ladders is contraindicated for pregnant women). However, today we were cleaning out the garage and biked over to Dan O’Callaghan’s house to deliver the Santa trailer to it’s rightful home (it’s been in our garage since December 2012). Dan has built a spectacular tree fort in his backyard, and while he and Chris were hoisting the trailer into the storage rack in Dan’s garage, Everett climbed the ladder to the tree fort. Perhaps this is why our attic ladder didn’t look so intimidating to him tonight. He asked Chris if he could climb the ladder and look around, which he did. Then he asked if he could go all the way up there and walk around. Chris said no, it wasn’t safe to do that without shoes on. Soon afterward Chris was wondering why Everett was putting his shoes on at bedtime, but the purpose should have been clear. So we climbed up there and looked around. Everett was reunited with several snugglies he found in a box. Chris was able to find some things for Teddy and Gwen, both of whom are outgrowing their 6 month clothes.