Emi doesn't nap, hasn't since about age 1. At school, this is a problem since the other kids all do and there is no separate room she can go to. They have ended up working out a routine where she lies down for 20 minutes, then can get up and draw quietly in a notebook they gave her.

As a result she has been working industriously on this notebook since mid-August, and finally brought it home the other day - her magnum opus. We had gotten a peek at it during parent-teacher night but it was fun to see the whole thing. She is starting to both read and write a lot of words, though there is still a lot of telegraphic writing (like "ILU MAMA" for "I love you, Mama") - like what you might see on a license plate. Most of the pages in the book have the text written underneath by the teacher, dictated by Emi. The pictures show a lot more action than they have in the past, more like cartoons. Where the text is the goofiest it is usually to match some odd aspect of the picture.

I hereby present for your entertainment and edification the third Tommy the Whale book (the previous books were very short picture books that she did in Seattle). Notes by me are in brackets, [], and anything Emi wrote herself is in ALL CAPS:

Tommy the Whale, Book 3
1. Preview: A long long time ago, there were no houses. Not even anything but red ants and ant houses and balloons in the sky. Not even a person. One day a wise balloon, the king of all balloons, decides to make some whales. So after that next there are trees. This is called Whale World of course because there is nothing but whales. The whales are what there is for a human. And after they made some whales, they made some mud and some grass and some sky.
2. Wicked Witch is happy that Tommy has no stripes. Tommy is sad that he has no stripes. That night Tommy had a dream. It was a funny dream. It was that somebody spit their tongue out at him and a bag of money appeared on his head.
3. The next day Tommy and his friend Mustappear [who is also a whale] went for a walk in the park. They walked to the pool. Then they went in the locker room.
4. Tommy and his friend Mustappear are having fun diving and splashing at the swimming pool. The pool was an outdoor one so they had a lot of fun splashing water on the sidewalk. Tommy's friend Mustappear made him have stripes again.
5. AWAYLOATOFDLY. [Teacher wrote below this, "away out of jail."] This is the deepest swimming pool I have ever seen. Tommy wasn't letting his friend Mustappear have the beach ball. Police had come to arrest Tommy.

6. Tommy is sad that he is arrested.
7. TOMMY the whale goes hiking. NOW TOMMY FELL HAPPY because he is out of jail. Chapter 3. Tommy the whale goes hiking.
8. TOMMY IS HAV FUN.
9. TOMMYWALE.IS SIK. TOMMYS MAMA MRCHES RAT INTOINTOHISROOM. [=Tommy is sick, his mama marches right into his room.] Then she saw straight away that Tommy did not look at all well. Then she gave Tommy some medicine.
10. GOSTOIH TOMY. GODBY SAID BY HIS MUTHE.
11. [Next page, text is gibberish, which may be for the best since illustration shows Tommy and Mustappear walking a dog. One is holding a bag of dog poop.]

12. GOODBYE ITS SEINE NOT BUTTNESS: MAMA IS WATEN FOUR ME SED TOMMY. [???: Mama is waiting for me, said Tommy.]
13. CHPTR3 TOMMY GOS T SCL [Chapter 3 - again! - Tommy goes to school. Rest of text on this page is gibberish.]
14. ANDTOMMY WOK TT SCHL [And Tommy walks to school.]
15. Tommy the whale said to Emma and Avery and Alex too, he said, "I'm going to Brazil tomorrow." "Have a good trip," his friends all said.

16. "Goodbye, have a good trip," they said at Tommy the whale's house.
17. Tommy the whale is homesick. Because Brazil makes him feel very small. [:(] He misses his friends too.
18. "Hooray!" Tommy's friends all yelled. Tommy the whale is coming home.

19. Chapter 4: Tommy the Whale Goes Fishing. Tommy's friend Avery is having a playdate with Tommy the Whale. Tommy is sad because he did not have a fish.
20. TOMMY IS HAPPY DAT HE HAS U FICH.

21. TOMMY IS SIK.
22. DAT TOMMY AY I MUST LTPY RR HAVN FUN. It was raining hard and Tommy the Whale said, "Goodbye, I must leave now."
23. Tommy the whale is sick. His mother Arabella gave him medicine. [An aside here - when pressed, Emi claims that Tommy is sick so often because he has "Snowfas Disease," a debilitating disease of her own invention. Last night, she insisted that she should not have to take a shower because she has it too: "Showers are the worst thing for people with Snowfas Disease - Mama, you don't know ANYTHING about Snowfas Disease!" I finally got her into the shower by "hiring" her as an expert consultant to teach me about Snowfas Disease.]
24. HI YE CED TOMMY FRED I HV BOT SUM PRSITS [Hi, said Tommy's friend - I have brought some presents!]
25. [2 pages of gibberish]
26. IT WUS TOMMES FRST YEY UUCHES VP TOMME IS CPLYN BECUS HE DUS NOT WANT U CHOT. [It was Tommy's first ???. He is complaining because he does not want a shot.]
27. TOMME IS NOT SIK. HE IS WAYEIN HIS NUTGAWN. [Tommy is not sick. He is wearing his nightgown.]
28. [1 more page of gibberish]
29. TEED [The End.]