Eye Opening

Last night, I was tucked in bed with Annika reading a library book to her, when she decided to start reading.

F-U-N, it said in the book. She knows her letter sounds, so she said "FFFFF-UHHHHHH-NNNNN..."

"FUN!!" she declared.

And thus is a reader born! This morning I got out the three-letter word puzzle and we worked on some other little words, like pig and tub. She's getting the hang of it.

It's such a wonder to me to see that flash go off in their minds, connecting the sounds together and out of the jumble of familiar words, to know that they suddenly see a WORD. It amazes me.

Anyway. Speaking of readers, I am currently almost 300 pages into the biggest book I have ever read. "House Divided" is, probably obviously, a fictional work about the Civil War. It's over 1,500 pages and I have borrowed it from the library, so I'm going to have to renew it five times! It is very good though, I would recommend it for men and women as it skillfully weaves the story of a Southern family with very detailed historical aspects of the Civil War. This is the way I like to get my history...enmeshed within fiction.

I guess it's like putting the dog's pills in peanut butter...!

In other news: my root canal went fine. I don't know why they get such a bad reputation. Mom said maybe because most people have a root canal after being in a lot of pain from having a tooth go bad. My tooth was dead, so I wasn't in any pain and probably wouldn't have even known there was a problem except that I had my teeth checked and they discovered it. Let's just say that I will be visiting the dentist more often than every three years from now on!

Anyway, the endodontist was excellent. I didn't feel a thing. I told Gen that the worst part was after he had drilled out the root canals and then had to use increasingly smaller files to file away calcifications inside the canals. Scrape, scrape, scrape with the file stuck up in the canal...ugh...not a pleasant sound. And he was constantly irrigating the area with bleach water. I had a dental dam across my mouth, but it didn't really kill off the pleasant aftertaste of bleach. Urgh.

Now I have to get a crown. God, I feel like I'm 72 or something. Sheesh.

We had a very quiet New Year's, which I'm sure you all could have predicted. Hans stayed up and played computer games until 2:00, so I guess at least one of us was up when the calendar turned over! Ah well, there will be a time and a place when New Year's will become more exciting. There were a lot of fireworks, though. I did hear fireworks going off until after 3:00 a.m. It's legal in Germany...you can buy fireworks at the grocery store.

Everything is all settled in our new apartment. Hans got us checked out of our old place on Wednesday and though I had been fretting about getting charged for certain stains or holes in the wall, the ladies who did the inspection said the old place looked great and checked us out with no problems. So--that's done for another year.

Gemutliches Neue Jahr everyone!