Please....allow me.

As of the writing of this post, we have NINE comments in Cans for Comments week. Keep 'em coming!

I need to brag on M for a minute. Okay, maybe two. :)

This kid....just when I think that contacting a band of gypsies is the way to go...

He's always been a sweet, sensitive, smart kid. He was a lover of Sesame Street from day one, saying nothing of that being his only option every morning-- he impressed his Kindergarten teacher by being her only student that could count past 100 before the end of the first term. After that, she never tested him, she just marked "100+".

By second grade, he was still doing well, reading above grade level (he started reading Harry Potter at Christmas time) and such, but his work was getting a little sloppy and he was daydreaming a LOT. And since he was a very social kid as well, he talked a LOT too. (I have NO idea where he got that...*giggle*) His second grade teacher was concerned that if he didn't get organized and buckle down he was going to be overwhelmed by third grade.

He did just fine.

Between third and fourth grade, we moved. I think that was harder on him than he let on. He started expressing that he didn't want to go to school but didn't put up much of a fight when I told him that he didn't have any choice. He did find two teachers that he just adored, and then a best friend, E. He started to get into choir in fifth grade and even took a week long "camp".

All the while, his teachers only complaints were that his work is sloppy. I can't argue, of course, because I've seen the way he keeps his room.

Then at the start of sixth grade, he hit 12. Suddenly, my sweet, cooperative boy is sometimes replaced by this person who rolls his eyes at me. WHAT!?!? We start to butt heads over things like doing his chores when he's asked and he's getting huffy and slamming doors-- which his father took care of right away. But fortunately, this isn't how it is all the time; if we ride out that storm, calm will be sure to follow....for two or three days.

Now, if you've been following my blog for very long, you know that we just moved for the second time in five years. J was very adamant that he know the boys' positions on purchasing this house and moving again. I tried to tell him that they are children and we shouldn't let them think that they actually get a vote this time, but he wanted to hear their opinion anyway. Let's just say that the child that we were most concerned about didn't have an opinion and the first grader was FULL of "I don't wanna move!" And as you know, the house was a steal that we just couldn't pass up, so we moved anyway.

Changing schools again meant a bigger transition for M this time--from elementary school to middle school. I was concerned at first, but his former principal assured me that M would transition well. And he seems to have done just that.

And the purpose of all this, you ask? His term grades came in the mail yesterday. All A's and B's-- even a B- in his advanced math class! Yay! *And* he had other news for me as well; his band instructor is so impressed with his trumpeteering, as he called it, that she is going to promote him to first trumpet! He was pretty excited about that.

He's transitioned well, is working hard and it's paying off. So, no band of gypsies for this kid just yet.

I wonder if they take first graders........