A book for every child

It's ironic but Bub is not a reader. You'd think a librarian's child would have more interested but his reading ability is not strong. He's getting there but it seems to be taking a lot to keep him on level. The school is doing its best to resolve the situation by putting him in reading remediation. He is also in speech therapy because his speech is lacking too and I'm sure there is a connection between the two and also the ADHD. But we do a lot of reading at home too. We've always read to him at bedtime and now he reads to us. Also I've always listened to audio books in the car but most of the time he is not with me, well, up until late in the school year last year. I started taking him to school as a way to offset his time on the bus and relieve the nighttime stress of homework which was driving me a breaking point almost every night. So he has been coming to work with me in the mornings, eating his breakfast and doing his homework in my office and then I've been taking him to school. It's working out quite nicely. One of the rules though is that I still get to listen to a book in the car. Most of the time he barely seems to pay attention but my line of thinking goes along that even if he is not outright listening, he is still hearing it and that can't be bad. I just finished the Enola Holmes series on Thursday and I don't think he liked the one because it is a bit on the violent side for a 7 year old. I put in Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier and at the end of the car ride to work, he said "I like this one," something I can't recall him every saying. Normally I continue on with a book even when he is not with me. But this time I decided we can listen to the whole thing together. So the next morning, we got in the car but had to drop Button off at daycare so I didn't put on the book. He was playing on his Nintendo DS and when I got back from bringing in her. I put the book on. He put down the DS and started listening and THAT really has never happened before. Over the weekend we didn't get a chance to really listen to it. But Monday morning as we were driving off the radio was on. He said, "We can listen to music later tonight. We should listen to the book" and my heart sang. I had finally found his book.

There's a great quote by Holly Black (I think) about there is the right book for every child and I've been searching for something that will click with him. He loves nonfiction but even that didn't seem to interest him. It's like reading is a chore and that is not an attitude that I am familiar with. I've always loved reading. I don't know what it is about Peter Nimble that has captured him but I'm hoping to pick books out now that he will want to listen to. He seemed a little interested in the Percy Jackson books when I had those so maybe I will go back with those. Maybe he would be interested in the  Peter and the Starcatchers series. I hope so. I'm going to try at least.

Pat on the back

I feel like giving myself a high five these days. I have successfully been meal planning and weekly grocery shopping since April. That's a long time for me since I tend to lack follow-through on my grand plans (see also: exercising, limiting electronic use, cleaning out the cabinets, homemade baby food, etc.).  Plus I've been using my reusable grocery bags at every trip and even have BT doing the same when he goes. It cuts down on the amount of plastic bags we have AND is very environmentally conscious.  We tend to eat the same things a lot but I've developed enough of a menu so that it's not the same thing every week. Plus when BT is off on weekdays he can do the cooking and that saves me some time and energy.

The other thing I managed to do was clean out Bub's room. His birthday and Christmas are coming up and so he is going to get more toys so I wanted to start parring down what he has now. He was away overnight this past weekend so I gathered all of the toys that were spread out all over the floor and under the bed and put them into garbage bags so that, soon, the two of us can go through them and decide what to keep and what to get rid of and find places for the stuff he wants. He has a lot of toys and quite of few of them are in pieces or half together or kind of babyish for his age. I'm really terrible at getting rid of things. I weeded his bookcase and pulled out quite a few "baby" books and put them in Button's room. I rearranged his room and put the little couch from Button's room into his room so now he has a sitting area and she has more room for a new bed that we will get in the next few months (hopefully). I'm going to go through her room and get it back into shape next weekend.

The other plan I have to is take one cabinet a weekend and go through it and organize it. It seems like every cabinet in the place is chockablock full of just stuff and I need to neaten it up. This is a more ambitious plan since it requires quite a bit of follow-through so we'll see. I'm going to try.