05 | April | 2004 | unbecominglevity.com

On certain days of the week I pick my daughter up after school and bring her back to my office. My wife stops by later on her way home to pick Lynnea up there. While there Lynnea usually grabs some printer paper and uses various writing implements from my desk (hiliters, whiteboard markers, etc) to draw pictures. I have a drawer full of such works at my office. I had to work on Sunday for a few hours, and while I was at the office I found a book that Lynnea had drawn and put together herself.

She had forgotten to show her book to me, probably because her Mom came to pick her up shortly after she finished it and she got distracted. Lynnea is presently in the first grade and she is 6 years old going on 7.

As I sat down and thumbed through the book, I couldn't help but feel proud at how well my daughter did without asking for any help spelling words, drawing pictures, or stapling the book together. The misspellings were cute, as were the curious arrangement of words… when Neya reached the bottom of the page and ran out of space she would write upwards along the right margin.

Some of it I couldn't read at all and when I got home later I told Neya how proud I was of her and asked her to read the story to me, which she happily did. It was a wonderful Father-Daughter moment, and I was amazed at how far she has progressed.

I told Neya I was so proud of her I was going to put her book up on my webpage so that Nana and Grampa could see it. So, without further ado, here is Neya's little book about easter eggs (you can click the thumbnails to see larger versions of any page):

Easter Eggs by Lynnea Abrielle Seggelin April 2, 2004
1: LYNNEA — estr eggs Easter Eggs	2: eggs are culrfol eggs are colorful	3: egg are littel and big eggs are little and big
4: eggs have spots and scwguls eggs have spots and squiggles	5: you can see patrns in the eggs you can see patterns in the eggs	6: eggs can be difrint eggs can be different
7: theat is my egge store that is my egg story