Finally.  Mikus has started to write.  It's been sorely testing my patience.  You'd think I'd remember valuable lessons from Tiss' road to literacy, described in this post.  And partly, I did - I remembered that new skills come as a sudden explosion, one minute they refuse to write, can't read anything, and the next day they write a whole sentence and you wonder how it happened.  Well I've been waiting for the explosion.  And waiting, and waiting.  And this week it's happened. Mikus has started to write.  It started with an age-old motivating tool - providing an "incentive".  So when Mikus started wheedling about wanting to watch TV this week, I told him he could do it if he wrote me a letter about it.  Voila, there I suddenly had a determined literary genius on my hands.  Since the first "I want TV", we have progressed to "I want popcorn", "I love chocolate", and the inimitable "I like Scooby Doo" (in Latvian, above).  Admittedly, he has started a whole year behind his brother, who started writing at 5 years, but I suspect that this is the new lesson I'm meant to learn - that you can't assume that all your kids are the same.  Appreciate the difference. Enjoy the nuances.  And watch some great Hanna Barbera cartoons along the way.