Creative Solutions

This morning, Mister Man and Little Miss played very nicely with the Word Whammer. It's really a great toy. Mister Man got it for his birthday last October, but I never even took it out of the box until a couple months ago. Silly me. It's a lot of fun!

The toy allows you to find letters, make "words" and see what they sound like or search for specific words with help that starts with "spell dim" and moves all the way to "the d is green." They have a lot of fun making words. Little Miss's words tend to be gibberish, but Mister Man has lately started spelling more real words.

I was in the family room working on something when Mister Man asked me for spelling help.

Mister Man: Mommy, how do you spell "itwaansh" (it was sort of unintelligble)

Me: Umm, its is spelled i-
Mister Man: No, atndsh
Me: Ant?
Mister Man: No, ateangsh
Me: I'm not sure, Sweetie. Sorry, but I can't help you with that one

It's quiet for a few minutes, and then:

Mister Man: I-N-C, Mommy how do I make it fit?
Me: Ohhhhh! "Inch!" Sweetie, that's four letters, and there are only three on the Word Whammer

More silence for a minute or so. Then I hear someone jumping up and down. Three guesses who was jumping up and down. He asked me to come check it out. And I found:

Me, I would not have thought of that solution -- obviously, as I didn't offer it to him. Needless to say, he was quite pleased with himself.

And yes, he also dressed himself. Thomas matches Thomas in his mind, regardless of whether it really does. And who am I to complain?

The kid cracks me up. And how he decided to spell inch or how he figured that out, I'm still not sure. Now if I could only get Little Miss to recognize when a letter is right side up or upside down!