Colin

My wonderful grown up help! I will write more about him a bit after his Birthday that is tomorrow. I really can't believe he is turning 8! That is when most of my childhood memories begin and I remember feeling SO GROWN UP. He is truly a wonderful boy. He is a huge help and gives up a lot to help me and maintain peace with his brothers.

He babysat today for the first time! Well, kinda. Ben was home sleeping since he is on the night shift so if something really bad happened Colin would have help but Ben is really really hard to wake up. Anyway, I ran to the store which ended up taking an hour b/c I had to go to 3 stores to get what I needed but he did great! He played Bingo with Evrett and let him pick the movie to watch. I was proud of him.

He is doing good in school. He is very smart but doesn't really care about grades. He will bring tests home with a 80% b/c of silly mistakes. He goes way too fast through his work and it doesn't bother him. He was on the same math level for months when his teacher emailed me saying he needs to pass it and move on or else he won't qualify for the advanced program next year. She told me to practice the problems with him. I did for about 30 seconds before realizing he knows every single answer. He just gets bored in the test (of 100 questions) and thinks about fun things instead of finishing within the alloted time. SO I told him I'd give him $10 for every level he passed. He came home the next time with a 99% (the one he missed was a bad copy) and has moved on to the next level.

He just finished reading the first Harry Potter which is 4th grade reading level. His teacher told him to take the AR test for it but to not expect to do very good since he is only in 2nd grade. He got 15 out of 20 right...she was amazed. It makes me sad that teachers peg him for mis-behaving and attention problems when really it is their boring teaching methods and lack of challenge. She told him Harry Potter was too hard for him to read b/c it was above his tested reading lever...well since reading it his tested level has shot up much higher. He just needs a challenge!

Like I said, I will write more about him later :)