Reading. Ballyhoo.

I have big things to report regarding my big boys (going to have to get used to qualifying just which boys I'm talking about now, since I have so many of them on my hands), and I think said report is best accompanied by cute pictures of them playing outside last week, before late fall set in and we all retreated indoors:

Oh, man, those blue eyes are going to SLAY some lucky young ladies in the future.

Speaking of lucky young ladies: a couple of them are going to catch some darling young men with very developed senses of humor and also large vocabularies in the future. Why do I make such a bold statement? Well.

My sons can read. With a lot of help from Calvin and Hobbes.

Okay, first, they can read. They are four, and they are, quite literally, reading. With very little help. And, I should add, without any formal reading instruction. Really, I promise. All we've done is create a home environment of readreadread allthetimeallthetimeallthetime, and this has very organically led to two little boys who just started reading one day. It's that simple.

If you've been in our home, then you know how immediately apparent our household's love of books is. We are surrounded by them at all times, and our children see reading modeled by their parents, who themselves find it very difficult to abide by the no-books-at-dinner rule that was established early in the marriage. The Professor and I had our first date at Barnes and Noble, where we hung out in the children's section, reminiscing about important books of our childhood and experiencing a dawning comprehension that maybe, just maybe, our souls spoke to one another. We read to our children often, and they are also surrounded by an impressive little library of their own. There is no television to distract us on these long winter nights; instead, we usually read. (Or have light saber battles.) Also important, in my opinion, is the fact that our grown-up books (within reason) are not off limits to them. So if they want to reach for the atlas or the Star Wars art encyclopedia or the (child-appropriate) graphic novels, then they can, as long as they treat them respectfully. And we will all read them together.

This is how they learned. All summer long they asked questions about letters, about how words sounded, about when letters were silent or hard or soft or what-have-you. We read signs in the car, at the store, everywhere. I repeated grammar and pronunciation and punctuation rules over and over, and they learned to accept the weirdness of English.

And then one day they weren't asking questions. They were sitting down, sounding out the words, and they didn't need much of our help.

Excuse me if I'm bragging. I realize they are not the first four-year-olds to read, and I realize that they are, in many ways, products of a privileged home with educated parents. But still. They are reading. Without the formal instruction that one normally associates with learning to read. Without a classroom. Without Dick and Jane.

J has taken this one step further and is successfully writing words, again without any instruction. I haven't done any work with them on letters, and then one day J was adding words to his coloring pages and deciding whether he is left- or right-handed and just which way a "J" is supposed to face. His brother is just behind him, puzzling out the difficult upper-case "B" and mysteriously insisting on writing the word "ballyhoo" on his drawing pages. I don't know, I just go with it.

So my sons are reading and writing, and we are quietly thrilled. And in a home of books, they naturally wandered toward a fun little collection that is placed just at the level of their knees. I am, of course, referring to our complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes books.

Now they pass the time surrounded by various Calvin and Hobbes comic collections, quietly sounding out the words, exclaiming over fun pictures, and asking just why Calvin uses his imagination so much. Bill Watterson's influence is already apparent in B's successful use of the words "immobile" and "giblets." (Yes, giblets.) Now Spaceman Spiff figures into their already elaborate epic space battles, and J has a very definite favorite Sunday comic.

It's the one where Calvin meets an alien and gives him his lunchbox and sends him in his place to school.

This is where our oldest sons are right now, reading and writing and thrilled to finally, finally be able to understand the words that all around them. We are completely over the moon excited for them.

And perhaps a little disgruntled, now that spelling things out doesn't keep things secret anymore.