"Ten dollar buck"

David can read. Really, he can! He's reading Hop on Pop and even though he will sometimes slip into his "memorization recitation" of the story, there are MANY times that he's actually sounding out words. I LOVE IT! He's only started reading this book Wednesday. He giggled and giggled with his hand over his mouth as he rolled around on the floor when it dawned on him that sounding out each individual letter actually made the word that was written on the page! He's memorized PARTS of the book but since he's really only been reading it since Wednesday, it's not a perfect memorization. He remembers the theme of each page and when he gets a little lazy I remind him to actually look at the words/letters. And when he does, he smiles the biggest smile knowing that he can actually figure out what the words are! It is a beautiful thing :)

My favorite part of his reading tonight was the page that says something like, "My father can read big words, too like CONSTANTINOPE and TIMBUKTU." Well, this was one of those pages where he just guessed at what it said. He told me, "I don't know this first word but I know that last one. It's 'ten dollar buck.'"

I laffffffffed!

It's times like this that I get a little sad about our decision and the recommendation of him not going to 5-year-old Kindergarten next/this year. He's SO smart! In fact, Shayne was basically only sounding out individual letters when she entered K, Harris Anne was doing pretty good and basically reading like David is now but she was a couple of months older than David is now AND she's a girl! I'm sorry, but David is really, really bright.

However, Donnie and I agree that socially..which has been the main issue with Kindergarten the whole time....it's still best for him to wait another year before doing ECS K. He will do a summer program one day a week and then do a pre-k 3 days a week (half days like ECS) in the fall.

One more big maturation process that occurred this week. I left the kids alone for about 20 minutes while I walked up and down the block in front of the house. I never got out of sight of our front yard but I still felt a little funny about it. We had a HUGE talk about emergencies before I did it and I called Shayne and talked to her on my cell phone the first half of my block. Instead of walking very far, I just walked the street a couple of laps. I don't think the kids had moved from the TV show they were watching the whole time I was gone.

Does anyone think I'm a bad mother for doing this?

I took some neat pictures today at our VERY FUN Sunday School party. We had the honor of hosting a lunch in the backyard today. I MIGHT try to post some tonight or tomorrow.