One of My Favorite Things EVER

There are all kinds of milestones I have been excited to witness my children achieve--sleeping through the night was always a biggie; learning to walk, to talk, to "avail oneself of the facilities," if you know what I mean. As a mother, my heart has thrilled to the sound of "I love you, Mommy" just as it has to the sight of my child feeding him/herself for the first time. But nothing, NOTHING compares to the joy it brings me when the world of words opens up to my children. Because reading? It's DA BOMB.

There may be a blog entry or two that would beg to differ, but I think I started the reading process with Sawyer not long after we'd celebrated his fourth birthday. Yeah, not interested. And for those of you who think I have expected way too much of kids way too early (reading Homer in Kindergarten, anyone?), I am pleased to tell you that I totally backed off. I'm not quite as dumb as I seem, and I have learned the hard way that trying to teach kids to read before they're ready is like trying to teach a pig to sing. (Please don't tell me you've been to a circus and actually seen a singing pig. Just don't.)

We picked the lessons back up at some point after we moved to Texas but I've got to tell you, with three older kids away all day and no Board of Education breathing down my neck to educate my four-year-old, Sawyer and I have found an awful lot of other things to do than sit down with a stuffy old reading lesson book (and I say that with all due affection for my trusty friend). Still, I do have some self-discipline left in me and I figured one lesson a day was doable. ONE lesson. Okay, not so much.

Sawyer turns five on Monday. He's on Lesson 60 (out of 100 lessons) in his book. And something tells me that neither he nor I is going to be inclined to go on a marathon reading spree and finish the book by the 27th. However, by the time a child reaches Lesson 60 in this book, he/she is already a respectable reader. Sawyer is not reading perhaps as fluently as he will be in 40 more lessons, but he's getting there.

Yesterday it warmed my heart as I sat at the front of the van, catching up with Tyler and Peyton as we waited until time for Darcy to get out of school, and I listened to Sawyer read aloud from some books he'd just gotten from the library. Until very recently Sawyer has seemed to lack the confidence to read anything but the stories from his lesson book; but lately he's been getting bolder and reading (most of) his other books to himself. Love it!