EJism of the day: (a little background.. he went to the main library on a field trip today and checked out a book on WWI) "Momma why are there wars?" Me: "because sometimes people think war solves the worlds problems" EJ: "Maybe they should just have a dance contest or something" Me: "I like that idea!"

This is a joke non-academic brag:

DS14mo is a smooth Casanova. Today he captured the hearts of two young ladies at once-- 12 and 19 months old, respectively-- and even had one following him around in search of kisses. Well played!

Naturally, we mothers were cracking up!

Ok so this is not super amazing, but for my ADHD/language disorder DS8 I thought it was pretty cool.

I had him out of school recently to do some one-on-one and we were at a McDonald's. His SLP had given him a reading comprehension assignment and he didn't want to do it. Having a weak moment, I offered him a small pop if he would just try. He agreed.

I got up, walked to a cashier who had no customer (about 20 feet from where we were sitting), asked for a small pop, paid, and returned to DS. I was expecting that he'd have a paragraph read. Instead he had read the entire page (about 200-250 words) and was able to correctly answer the comprehension questions

DS4 got his preschool "report card." It's quite detailed--much more so than my third-grader's! Anyway, he got 100% on every computerized academic assessment, which is not a surpise. What I'm pleased with is that he also "met or exceeded" every single one of the 60+ social/emotional/developmental benchmarks. I was pretty sure he was doing beautifully, but it's nice to see.

Ha-Ha- report card. My son's report card says he knows almost half of the alphabet S and half of the numbers to 20. Lol. I've already read here that the report cards only cover what they've taught in class, not what the kid knows so I proudly put his report card in the souvenier box.

Here's my 2yr old's kumon letter work. The thing I'm bragging about is fine motor skills because I tell her which line to draw next. Two pics of that, then a picture of a superhero fight for good measure.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296...4A67C236A94.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296...4A68736C719.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296...4A6D8A8AEB1.jpg

My DS 4 was reading a book and I heard him say, case in point, then he said
Hey mom, case means a lot of different things, for example: Camera case, case of beer and ques a dilla!

Another funny. DD9, whom I'll call Charlotte for privacy's sake, silenced my half-joking guilt tripping the other night. I was doing the dishes and wanted her to help. She resisted, so I tried for a low blow with, "When you're grown up and I'm old and gray and unable to get out of my chair, you'll regret that night you did not help your dad with the dishes."

"That's future Charlotte's problem," she said.

DS4 and I are reading Harry Potter. It's WAY below his stamina level as far as reading goes, but if we alternate paragraphs and I help him with the difficult words and mild Britishisms, he actually does pretty well. Well above his independent level, obviously, both due to the reading level of the book and DS4's lack of stamina/attention span, but fairly good as a learning experience. He stumbled over the first instance of the word "mysterious" (did you know it shows up three times in the first chapter?), but read it successfully the next two. Independently, he's reading Sideways Stories from Wayside school (just opens it up to a random chapter and reads).

He has also declared that "he's taking a break from math for right now."

I'm not a real regular here, but needed to brag somewhere because we're starting to get weird reactions about stuff like this.

My 13 month old just informed my friend that he didn't want to come downstairs... he shook his head and told her "big kid" and then marched off to where the three year olds were

I didn't see it, but it sure sounded cute when she told me about it

Back again with more brags. I am sorry but I want to share with someone and don't have many people who will just listen without judgement.
So, dd3.3 was talking about how Fall means a season but also falling down like London bridge is falling down. I acknowledged saying sometimes words do have more than one meaning. She asked if spring has two meanings. I said," yes. Spring is a season but also a thing that goes boink, boink." I was desperately searching for a better way to describe spring while using my hand motion. DD just says," spring is a curly piece of metal that bounces and sticks to a magnet." I just shut up.

One more brag. One of my friends gave DD a drawing set where the papers have wax so when you color, the wax areas stay white and reveal shapes. DD loved it. She took that idea and created a negative image of a flower by herself. She drew an outline of a flower and colored the box around it. I will post a link to the drawing later. It was just so cool!