Books, Cheerios... Amazement.

Ok, so I really don't have time for this, but I'm so proud I could explode.

Maelynn can recognize just about every Thomas and Friends engine you can imagine.  If that wasn't enough, she when to school with me today to work with the middle school clarinets, and she was fabulous.  Standing there trying to copy me counting off for the girls... yeah, look out Texas.  Here comes your next TMEA State Honor Band director.

Richie can count to 60... okay, with help at the tens places and he loses count around seventy. He's awesomely loving and sweet, and is rockin' his verse memory in Cubbies.

Ryan... the same child who didn't have even three words at age three... who couldn't ask for so much as a cookie until he was way over three... just completed reading his eighth book to his Daddy and I for the month.  He'll turn in his first completed Book It form of his school career tomorrow.

A step toward the Nobel Prize, curing the common cold, or just being the next Steve Jobs?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

But it might as well be to this Mama.

When he brought home the Book It form, I teared up... first out of nostalgia because I was the kid getting in trouble for walking down the hall reading, then out of sadness.  How is he going to sit still to read a book?  Then the ol' hope kicked in.  There's nothing we can't at least try.

And we did.  He did it.

He doesn't seem to know or care what he's done, but as we've finished each book, the celebration of that individual accomplishment was priceless.  You know what else?  He wasn't proud because he finished the book.  I had to tell him when the book was finished.  He was proud ... beaming from ear to ear, humming happily and saying "terrific" because we all-but jumped up and down every time he finished a book.  He saw pride and approval in his parents' eyes.  He has no idea of a prize to work toward, or a goal completed.  The prize on our faces was prize enough.

As I type this, he's on to his next accomplishment.  For this one we recruited the help of his brother, who was intrigued at the idea.  Cheerios, lined up in ten rows of ten, glued painstakingly on neon green poster board.  A certain masterpiece of 100th day of school art.  And, provided it makes it to school with all its little cling-ons, he'll have completed yet another part of something I wasn't even sure he was going to be able to do.  Each one of these accomplishments puts us one step closer to tying our shoes, riding a bike... maybe even holding a regular conversation. To tell the truth, even if he never does these things, he's pure awesomesauce.  They all are!

And I am so proud of them.  So grateful for God's providence in all the steps that unfold in our family's life, and so thankful for everything our kids have taught us and will teach us.

Thanks be to God!