From left to right:
Claire. Claire is our eldest. She is 5 1/2 and the family academic. She loves books and reads them aloud with great expression. She is a serious kid who needs things to make sense. She asks for explanations of things she doesn't understand and keeps asking questions till the answer satisfies her. She is ready and able to articulate her opinion about just about anything. Claire loves words. A couple of months ago, she insisted on having frequent, lengthy conversations about homonyms. She likes a good story, loves witty dialogue and listens intently to any additional learning we can juice out of a book.
Daniel. Daniel is barely one and the only boy. He is often quite willing to sit and listen to a story but feels that the experience should be 'hands on'. We have decided that he is not to be trusted around anything but board books for a little while yet. He's the quality control manager but will be giving us opinions about books before we know it.
Jillian. Jillian is our middle child (almost 4) and has a personality meant for the stage. Jillian speaks about everything with great drama. And I mean everything. She can convince you that a boiled egg is the most exciting thing in the world. Jillian is learning to read and is pretty good at it but she loooooves being read to. If someone in the house starts reading, she will drop everything to come and listen. Most often she sits there, cuddled into the reader with her thumb in her mouth. She immerses herself so completely that she is acutely aware of any mood in a story and will laugh hysterically or tremble with fear (and not let us turn the page). Where Claire is willing to give almost any story a chance, Jillian often tends to be extreme. She will love a book so much that she will beg for it to be read all day and then sleep with it under her pillow. She is also capable of making one she doesn't like disappear from her sight (she will stuff the ones that scare her into the space between the wall and the bookshelf).
