Exit Here

Noah's beginning to expand on his reading abilities. He's pretty good at word recognition, like reading words he's familiar with on iPad games or Kinectimals and whatnot.

The other day, about two weeks ago, we were picking Travis up from school, waiting outside his classroom. Noah pointed to a sign in the hallway and asked what it said. It was an EXIT sign, pointing the direction to the doorway. I informed Noah of that. He nodded solemnly and repeated "exit" quietly.

Since then, he's been obsessed with EXIT signs. Driving down the toll road, he screeches, "EXIT! Mom! I saw an EXIT sign! Did you see that EXIT sign?!?" In Meijer, he hollers, "Look, Mom! EXIT! Do you want to EXIT?!" And of course, at Travis's school, he never fails to point out the original EXIT sign with delight and excitement. "E - X - I - T spells EXIT!"

Last week, I was upstairs putting laundry away, and Noah was playing in his room. He said, "Mom! You have to come see this! It kind of looks like "exit"!" Interested, I followed him to the CD player in his room. He pointed to the "Next" button, exclaimed, "look, there is an 'E X' just like in 'exit'! What does it say?!" We sounded it out as I explained to him that it said "next", which does indeed contain the "ex" sound just like in "exit".

Then he surprised me by saying, "what does this button say? I think it says "back" but I'm not sure." And then, "Look, this one says Stop, just like a stop sign!" He was right on both counts.

When I went to pick up the boys from my sister's house, after they'd spent three days there while Ben and I went skiing, Noah was in a pretty sour mood. I think he was mostly sleepy, but he cried and wailed as we left and during most of the car ride home. What finally cheered him up? As he was whimpering in the backseat, he suddenly spotted his favorite word along the side of the toll road, and shrieked, "Mom! Exit!" and was in a squeaky happy mood for the rest of the trip.

Similarly, he had been in a funk one afternoon when I picked him up from my mom's. There is exactly one Exit sign along the road on our route home. Once Noah saw it, he said, "Oh, look. An Exit sign. The only thing that makes me happy is Exits and bo-bos. And Slinky dog."

Well okay then.