Welcome back to #iPPP! Mama Mash and I want to see your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favorite phone photos of the week. Link up below!

Thank y’all for talking me off the ledge last week. Things did get better. I still don’t like to see my little man walking across that gym floor, but at least he does it more confidently now.

Speaking of my great big (little bitty) first grader, I have to brag on him.

But first, a little background. Henry hates doing homework. At all of his parent/teacher conferences last year, his kindergarten teacher told us that he could do things that she asked him to do, but he would get distracted and start doing something else, something he wanted to do.

She laughed and laughed telling us about the time that he was supposed to be writing (over and over) the number 16 on his paper. He wrote it a few times, then turned it over and started drawing a picture. A huge number 16, surrounded by army men and all kinds of other paraphernalia.

She asked him what he was doing (instead of his work). “I’m celebrating the number sixteen!”

Yeah, so Henry is chock full of imagination, and drama, and PERSONALITY.

All that to say that he doesn’t enjoy school. He loves being social, but he gets overwhelmed, and he’d sure as heck rather be “building” (his Legos). When he gets home, all he wants to do is veg out or go to his room and build something.

We went to the kids’ Parents’ Night at school on Monday night to hear about what they’d be doing all year, their schedules, etc. In first grade, they have reading groups and their homework depends on what group they’re in and what they need to work on. Instead of the large group doing the same thing, each first grader reads at his/her own level to get to where they need to be at the end of the year.

At the beginning of the year, the first graders should be somewhere around level 0-3. By Christmas, around 12, and by the end of the year, 18-20.

On the way out of Parents’ Night, T. and I stopped to ask one of the teachers what level Henry had tested at. He had just started reading on his own during the summer, out of nowhere, and we were super curious about where he was at.

Turns out, he tested at the “end of the first grade year” level, at 19.

I’m so proud of him. This is going to be a long year of butting heads over finishing homework, but at least we know he’ll be reading!

The boy will read catalogs, magazines, books, Lego encyclopedias. He doesn’t discriminate.

Doing his first reading homework while the girls take a bath.

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