Dinosaurs, Jesus and Pecan Pie

Olivia's interest in writing and drawing has recently escalated. She's at it all of the time. At any given moment, I can walk into her room and find her hunched over her desk contentedly doodling away. She is very serious.

It's precious.

And hilarious.

I am probably a rotten mother but I laughed myself blind this weekend when she handed me one of her latest masterpieces.

"It's about dinosaurs," she said.

"I see that," I replied after observing her title, "Graveyards of the Dinosaurs". And then, I read her accompanying text:

I liket the purt weyru the dinosaur and it's beb dinosaur soll the huooting stor.

Although I was able to discern what she wanted to say, I couldn't understand why she was so far off on the spelling. Seriously, some of the letter combinations just didn't make sense although she was smart enough to copy hard words like "dinosaur" from one of her books. For instance, look at the word, "weyru". She meant "where" but it was spelled in a multi-syllabic fashion as if an evangelical preacher had taught her the word.

Kids learn to spell phonetically, right? And then it hit me....she WAS writing phonetically. My baby girl is a southern belle. She has an accent, which is so weird for me because in spite of her environment, I sort of expected her to talk like a Canadian. I know that this is whacked, especially since even I don't sound much like a Canadian anymore unless I get around my family. Still, to hear the word "mama" roll off her tongue makes me think about magnolia trees, cotton plantations and pecan pie. I suppose there was a part of me that thought Olivia would outgrow her southern roots and slip into a more neutral way of speaking but clearly, I was wrong. Just the other day, she gave me a very informative lecture on God.



She handed me this picture and shyly said, "This is for you, Mama." I thanked her, gave her a kiss and asked her to tell me about her drawing.

"Oh... that's you, Mama (pointing to the large figure with excellent teeth, long eyelashes and inexplicable barrettes) and that's me (small bean in my arms). It's lightning outside and raining but we're okay because THE SWEET BABY JESUS said so."

Well now.