So we just wrapped up the whole speech thing with Lauren, and just a week later, we are onto a new adventure . . . reading. Let's back it up to how this all went down . . .
Lauren came home on Tuesday and said to me, "Mom, I have a special letter for you in my back pack." I was making lunch at the time so I just gave her the standard, "that's nice, why don't you go get it and put it on the counter." So off she went, got her back pack, then pulled out the letter and said, "it's a special letter because I'm the only one who got one." This is when I stopped making the meal and got a little worried. In my experience (a little back ground story coming up), being the only one to get anything from a teacher or someone in an authoritative position is NEVER a good thing. Why you ask? Well here's my story . . . I was a freshman at college, just about a month into basketball practice and out of the blue, my assistant coach tells me that my head coach wants to talk to me in her office. I, being a stupid freshman, thought that was pretty cool. The coach obviously wanted to tell me how great I was doing, and what a super addition to the team I was, you get the idea. So off I happily skipped across campus, and up to the coach's office. What happened when I got there (I'm still a little confused by it all today) was that Coach Neiber told me I had been turned in by an "anonymous" person because I, "kept her awake with my drinking while she was trying to sleep." Well, for one, the "anonymous" part could have been left out because other than my bitchy roommate, there was no one else to "keep awake" and two, I wasn't drinking when I was around her, I had done all my drinking prior to arriving in my dorm room (at least they could have had their facts straight). Anyway, after throwing that news at me, my coach proceeds to tell me that, "you could put on a few pounds so having a six pack and a pizza isn't a bad thing, but you shouldn't drink because if you get caught again, I'll have to tell your parents (WHAT? I thought using the sentence, "I'll have to tell your parents" no longer applied once you were at college) what you've been doing and you won't be able to travel with the team (we had a trip to California coming up - no way was I going to miss that!). With that super confusing conversation, I left thinking two things . . . I really hope she doesn't call my parents, they would be SO mad at me, and two, am I still allowed to drink and eat pizza if I'm doing it for the sake of gaining weight? Like I said, super confusing. Anyway, back to Lauren . . . so I pick up the letter, get about half way down and see highlighted, "because your student scored slightly below average" and then I proceed to freak out. Slightly below average what? So I calm down, read the whole letter from top to bottom and realize that our little Lauren who just passed speech now has a "reading deficiency." Can the kid get a break? At first I was shocked, Lauren can write and read lots of things like, the word "Lauren", or the words, "mom", "dad", "Ryan", and "Ellie", then I ran out of words she can read or write. Wow, maybe she does need a little extra help. Then I thought, "what is wrong with me that I consistently miss things that happen to Lauren" . . . I was a late bloomer on the whole speech thing (I could understand her so too bad for everyone else who couldn't), when she got teeth as a baby, I never figured it out until the actual tooth popped through (no medicine for our tough little girl), when she kept running into things and couldn't keep her balance, I never once thought it was the double ear infection she had - see what I mean? I kind of think I'm a terrible mom (at least to Lauren). That's when I decided we all needed to make some changes. I need to be more present and listen to what the kids are saying, and we all need to focus a little more time on school work and the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, and less on games, television, and electronics. With that, I got right to work with Lauren (Ellie was down for her nap). I went on the computer, found the "sight words" list for kindergartners, and printed them off. Then Lauren and I started in on "learning how to read." And not surprisingly, it was tough for Lauren and for me. Lauren knows all the sounds the letters make, but she just doesn't get how to put them all together to make words, instead, she just guesses. Like when I showed her the word "jump." She took one look at the "j" and apparently threw out the first word that came to her mind that started with the "j" sound . . . jellyfish. That wouldn't be my first word, but then again, I'm not Lauren. After a very frustrating 30 minutes or so, we started making some progress. She was putting sounds together, and coming up with the right words, then I stumped her. I showed her the word, "in". And I don't know why, but Lauren can't seem to keep the "i" and the "a" sounds straight. So she looks at the word and says with a sly smile, "you're trying to trick me aren't you Mom?" And then she proudly says, "am". Well, no, that is not the answer. The "i" is still an "i" and the "n" is an "n", not a "m" - clearly we have more work to do. But the best thing about doing this with Lauren . . . she's just happy to be spending a little extra time with mom, and better yet, she gets to hang out with a new teacher at school when all of the other kids have to stay back in class - always looking for the positives that girl!
So that's Lauren's story for the day, now here is Ryan's. Ryan almost always starts our conversations with, "Mom, you'll never guess . . .", or "Guess what Mom?" Either way, I never know what he is going to bring up because 99% of the time, it has nothing to do with whatever we were just doing, or talking about. So today he says, "Mom, you'll never guess what Sean and I found." I said, "what?" He says, "some really cool chapstick on the ground." (In my head I'm thinking, "please, please tell me he picked it up and threw it in the garbage"). And then he says, "we tried it out, it tasted really good" - and then I proceeded to puke a little in my mouth. God knows who had that before him, or why it was on the ground, but apparently none of that bothered him as he probably liberally applied it to his lips. The good side of his story? When I asked him what they did with the chapstick, he said Sean took it home. Now if I know anything about Sean's mom, I know this . . . the lady is a germ freak! I can only imagine the scrub down Sean got and the lecture about never using chapstick that you find on the ground (why is that even a conversation we ever have to have with our kids, what happened to common sense?). After that story, he took a break to do some homework, and when he finishes, says, "Guess what Mom?" I say, "what?" He says, "did you know that we are half Canadian?" With a smile, I said, "no", and wait for his response (which I knew would be a good one). He said they were studying Social Studies in class today and he and his buddy, Zane, somehow figured out that the name, "Mayme" (my grandmother's name on my dad's side) was in fact Canadian. He couldn't exactly pinpoint how they figured it out the name was Canadian, but he was sure he was right because both he and Zane agreed that it was. Well then, if that doesn't prove anything, I don't know what does! After his story wrapped, I immediately jumped on the phone to let my dad know that he was in fact part Canadian (funny thing was, he had no idea). He should probably call tomorrow and thank Ryan for that little bit of knowledge.
I'll leave with two pictures of Ryan loving his new "long" hair. Tonight he went for the "punk rocker/Miley Cyrus tongue hanging out" look.
