My Boy Can Read!

Oh yes, I am extremely excited. I think I scared the pants off Ian. I think I told ya'll about the Bob Books. If not, they're great, in my opinion. I've been using them to help start Avery into reading. They keep with pretty much the same words within a book, keep a lot of them into the next book while adding a new word or two and using a new word family.

Well, Ian has this thing they do from school. If he reads 10 books in the month, he gets a pizza coupon....could it get any better for him! He's made it one month, but I've had trouble getting any books on there the last couple of months. Obviously, I don't wait until he can read the book fluently by himself (he might be in 3rd grade by then :) ). So, I consider his abilities when deciding when to write the book down as "read". Well, I decided to try a Bob Book since it's a great beginner. I pointed to the words, and here's what HE read, totally on his own. "Dot had a cat." Next page: "Cat had a hat." And he continued to read the rest of the pages (about 6). He got caught up on 'sad' (called it 'said') and 'on' (called it 'no'). It was very obvious after watching him read the book that he has been learning the site words at school very well.

After he read the first page, I screamed...yes, screamed. He looked at me like I was nuts. We high fived over and over and I told him how proud I was of him over and over. He looked like a very proud peacock. After I showed Jim what he could do (he usually thinks I exaggerate until he sees it himself), he told his teacher and the head of the program. They wanted me to send the book to school so he could read it there too.

Then, yesterday, Ian's aid told Jim something he did. They had 2 sets of cards. One set had shape words on it (trapezoid, rhombus, circle, triangle, square, rectangle). The other set had the shapes on them. He was to match the shape names with the correct shape. He read each shape name and matched it to it's correct shape. He did call the rhombus a diamond...that's because it looked like one the way they drew it. :)

I was thinking a lot about Ian last night on my run. And about the rest of you. I was thinking about how much rejoicing we've all had and great it has been to share it all. I was thinking about how the Lord really uses the little things in life to remind us how big He is. I don't know where the rest of you stand, but I know without a doubt that I would definitely not be seeing things the same way if it were not for my Jesus. Do I wish sometimes ( a lot) that I had 'typical' kiddos? Sure. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. But would I ever change my kids or switch them out? NO WAY! Life will always have it's tough rides (whether I had FX kids or not). So why not learn to watch for these wonderful moments and let them outweigh the heavy ones! Something I have to continue learning everyday. But I sure feel like I'm further ahead than I was on diagnosis day!