Posts Tagged ‘storytelling’


I know it’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything. And no, Nariah hasn’t stopped with her humorous ways. I’ve just been slacking. I’m trying to get back on the ball.
We went to the playground today, and Nariah ends up meeting and playing with a couple of girls, one of whom is a couple of years younger. They are playing with a baby doll the other girl brought with her when all of a sudden she looks at Nariah’s face and says, “Wow… why are you teeth so big!!?!?!?!?
As a parent overhearing this you wonder if your child is about to get their feelings hurt, start crying or any of the other possibilities. Silly me… I forgot who I was talking about, this is Nariah. She, in a almost “duh…” type response, replies “Well… my teeth fell out….
Now the other girl is even more shocked. “Your teeth fell out?!?!?!  What the what?!?!!“.  Ok, so maybe “what the what” wasn’t said, but my mind surely did insert that into what seemed like the next logical thing out of this kids mouth was, given the conversation.
Yeah, I’ve lost 4 teeth, and I have 3 loose ones right now…“. Nariah then started giving this girl history of her teeth, from the fateful day when a wagon broke her first tooth at daycare to how she gets Tinkerbell instead of the Toothfairy to deliver her teeth money.

Toya and I just sit on the swings chuckling as we witness what started out as an potentially sensitive topic become a campfire storytelling session.
What’dya know? Crisis adverted.

big teeth paci


I know most parents brag about their kids. Its only natural right? Sometimes the bragging can be an over the top “my kid is better than your kid” type, sometimes it can be the “proud parent” type, and sometimes it can just simply be “sheer amazement”.

Nariah is my first child. Things as simple as when they say “excuse me” or tell their first joke feels like a big deal because it’s your first child. Now there comes a point where you get those “come on now, is this for real?” moments and that’s what this is, at least for me and my wife it is. We’ve just had a parent teacher conference with Nariah’s kindergarten teacher. She’s reading exceptionally well and is pretty good at writing. Although the teacher mentioned Nariah would write the bare minimum when it came to sentences because she wants to be finished quickly and move on. If the exercise was for the students to write what they did this past weekend, Nariah would write something like “I went home. I had fun.” and leave it at that. Nothing along the lines of variance. The teacher was trying to get Nariah to get more creative with her sentences. Now this conference happened 3 days before this “sheer amazement” moment.

We’re visiting my grandparents in NC, and everyone is kind of doing their own thing. Nariah asks her granddad for some paper and something to write with. Over the course of the next few minutes I walk by and see her kneeling on the floor writing and drawing intently. “What are you doing baby?
I’m writing a story and illustrating it too! I’m going to read it to you guys
Oh ok, cool!

Now at this point my “Oh ok” was really expecting a simple “See spot… See spot run” type story. Oh, was I ever wrong. With Nariah’s permission she has given me the rights to share her work. This is a book she wrote all by herself with out any help. She did a pretty good job phonetically spelling a lot of words. Aside from her needing to “slow down” a little and finish out the words we know she knows already, this was awesome in my opinion. The concept of this story alone is a far cry from the 3 word sentences we had just heard about. I’ve added captions showing what she says on each page underneath each picture from when she read it to us for the first time. Click on the first picture to open up the gallery.