Yet Another Little (Surprising) Rabbit Out of Her Hat

Well, once again Grace surprised me with a trick o' the brain I didn't know she possessed (yet):

Grace can read!

OK -- perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. But she did "read" three sight-words (or, in other words, recognized three words by sight, rather than by phonetically sounding them out):

Grace
Aidan
No

It really did surprise me. I'm not sure what possessed me to "test" her, but at lunchtime today, while she sat engrossed with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I grabbed the pencil and paper nearby and wrote "Aidan."

"What's this?" I asked her.

She glanced up quickly. "Aidan," she said immediately, not skipping a beat.

Whoa! Not even a moment to think about it!
OK -- let's try this again. I wrote "Grace" on the paper.

"What's this?" I asked her.

Again, she glanced up for a millisecond and then went back to her sandwich. "Grace," she said matter-of-factly.

Cool!
OK -- let's try another one. Names are too easy -- she might think there's a pattern. I then wrote "No."

"What's this?" I asked her.

Once again, the quick glance and the speedy answer: "No," she said.

I was amazed!
It stopped there, however. The following words -- Mom, Dad, Cat, Dog, Hi -- went nowhere. When I wrote "Mom," she said "Grandma." Darn.

She's a stinker, though. After lunch I suggested we go upstairs to show Grandma and Grandpa what she learned. I made a big deal out of the whole thing, heaping praises, thinking that perhaps these abounding verbal rewards would inspire her to do and learn more. Turns out that must be a "first-born" child thing ... didn't work with Grace at all. We went upstairs and sat at the table. I wrote "No" on the paper, changing it up a bit to lose its predictability. Grace looked at the paper ... and then looked at me with a very sly smile.

"Dog," she said.

Oh, man ...
Well, she did it. I know it wasn't a fluke -- her first three sight words! Pretty cool milestone. But what stinker, foiling the exercise. She is so unlike her brother ...

Now if I could only get her to figure out how to pee on the potty ...