Today was a big day for my little Beiruti. Actually it started yesterday. While changing the baby’s nappy for the umpteenth time, I hear my Beiruti girl next to me reading out the numbers on the packet of diapers. It’s the full list of the sizes made by the  brand: “Zero, one, two, three, four, five…” – then comes a parallel range that they do in pull-ups: “muxl,” she says. I’m still trying to pin down the little ones legs long enough to get his PJs back on. She does it again and a thought dances briefly around my mind – what kind of a number is “muxl”? In go the wiggly little feet and finally the poppers are lined up right and I look at the nappy packet. After the string of numbers, the parallel range is labelled: M, L, XL. And then I realise she has been trying to pronounce the letters as a single word, the thing I have been teaching her for a couple of weeks now. I wanted to get a pad and pencil out there and then to test this new skill. But this is real life and I have a fridge in the bedroom, men drilling in the kitchen, tools strewn about the place, boxes still unpacked from the move, and am lacking the required vitamins to make my brain work, no doubt because I’m living off tostadas and churros due to said kitchen issues.

So it had to wait until today, when we took the chalk out onto the terrace and I wrote: L A… “LAD”, she said straight off, a word I have written for her several times recently. So I changed my mind and added a P instead, “LAP”, a word we use, but haven’t written. “La…p, lap,” she pronounced hesitantly. At least I thought she did. To check if she had actually understood the sounds as a word, I asked, “Where is one of those? Can you point to one?” She pointed to my knee. So I wrote R E, and she said “reh”, I added a D and she said “Red.” “Show me some.” She found a red plant pot. I was amazed. I’ve never written “red” for her before. Our drawing and writing times are often out and about waiting for something, or keeping her calm during adult time, so I usually stick to the most basic tangible things that are easy to illustrate with just the pencil in my bag – cat, dog, hat, etc.

So I now have the paradox of a child of 2 years and 7 months who can read but isn’t toilet-trained. And I thought it was bad enough that she tries to tell me how to change her nappy. Let’s hope her new toilet seat and a bit of stability will be just what we need, after 10 months of moving house, moving country and adding to the family. Now that we’re staying in one place for a while. After our trip to England next week that is.

More about learning letters, numbers and words later, right now I have another nappy to change.