After the news, I brought the girls back into the kitchen and showed them how to use everything I had gotten them. I showed them how to properly hold pencils and markers and drilled into their minds that the caps always had to be put on when not in use. As I prepared dinner, Sonja and Momo were seated at the dinner table, doodling with big grins on their faces and markers flying.
"Master! Master! Look what Momo drew!"
She rushed over to me, holding up a crudely drawn picture of the three of us on the couch. Funny thing though, she drew her and Sonja as a dog and a cat. It looked like it had been made by a first-grader, but I still loved it.
"Very good, very good! It's beautiful! I'm hanging it right up on the fridge!"
I rubbed her head to congratulate her, relishing the sound of her purring.
After having dinner, the girls watched as I reached into one of the bags of art supplies and pulled out a label maker.
"What's that?" asked Sonja.
"This is to help you learn to read," I said as I cut away the plastic packaging.
After failing to get it working and having the swallow my pride and read the directions, I started printing off labels for everything in the kitchen. They soon started following me around the room, reading off things as soon as I tagged them.
"Cab-i-nets..." said Momo, opening and closing the overhead door over and over.
"Close, it's 'cabinets'."
"Refri-ger-a-tor..." said Sonja, wagging her tail in front of the stainless-steel box.
"Refrigerator," I said.
"K-nife," Momo mumbled, examining the cutlery.
"Nope, just knife. The k is silent."
"Ap-plee," said Sonja, a piece of fruit in her hands.
"Nope, it's pronounced app-el, just like table."
"Lig-ht..." Momo said, squinting at the light switch.
"Light," I replied.
"Why are these words so weird?"
"Oh honey, it's because English is stupid. It's a horribly conceived language that mooches off of other languages for bits of spelling and grammar."
Then with a smile on my face, I printed off a small label and stuck it to Sonja's forehead. As expected, she frantically started spinning around, her eyes rolling all the way back as she tried to read what it said.
"What's it say?! What's it say?!"
Momo came by and read it. "Dog."
"That's correct," I said. I then put a label on her own forehead.
"Sat," said Sonja.
"No, she's a cat. In this case, c sounds like k." Then, on a roll, I printed off more and more labels and stuck them on their bodies, naming all of their parts for them. "And now, onwards through the rest of the house."