It feels so good

Tonight, we started a new chapter book (The Magic Treehouse: Haunted Castle on Hallow's Eve) and while I said "We're only going to read two chapters tonight" at the beginning, Anthony kept asking for "One more chapter!" We ended up reading five and he was still begging for more.

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I had a conference today with Anthony's teacher and it went really well.

Anthony is at the top of the class academically. His teacher says about half of the class does well with writing letters but Anthony is the only one who is writing sentences. He is also the only one in the class who can pick up a book for the first time and read 90% of it without help.

I've been told that although they haven't had a reading assessment done, yet -one will be done half way through the year- he will most likely be the only one in his class on his level and that he will most likely join another student or two from other classes for reading groups. The fact that they are going to split kids up to join others who are on the same level excites me. Every week I learn something new about things this school does and they all have been good -it makes me feel good about my decision to put him into this program.

He has always been so eager to learn and I have loved feeding his appetite for it over the years. I just hope we can keep this momentum going throughout his schooling.

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This report comes on the heels of a report I got a couple weeks ago from two of the daycare workers that take care of Anthony. They say that he is the absolute best kid in that entire daycare. They were just gushing about how polite and smart he is. It really made me tear up.

I finally feel like I have been doing things right. Life has been crazy since he was born. I always worry how everything will affect him and wonder how messed up he will be because of everything that happens in his life. Roy has been in and out of his life, we've moved many times, but up until a year ago I had been a constant. And then last year everything came undone, uprooted, completely and utterly f'd up. And he had his rough moments. We all did. It's no secret that this past year has been brutal on all of us.

To hear that other people think that he is a great kid, see that he has manners, see that he is smart... it makes me feel good. It makes me think that I can do right by him, even if I am a single mother raising a boy.