Hey there, dear reader, how was your weekend? I hope it was as relaxing and rejuvenating as you wanted it to be.
We had a lovely, full weekend (more on this, later post) and enjoyed some of the best spring weather to date.
FYI, If you haven’t seen, I recently posted my first workout video, so if you’ve been meaning to get moving, but haven’t because of ______, or ______, or ______, now is your chance (it’s free and you can do it in your living room in under 20 minutes. Yay!).
Also, there was an interesting comment from Amberly in my Why I Became Vegan post. It’s at the very bottom and is regarding vitamin B-12. I gave my response, and if you’re interested, check it out, and put in your two cents if you like. I mean to devote a future post to the issue (heaven knows this isn’t a highly enough discussed topic for vegans, right?).
Today I want to talk about these guys.
His name means happy and this is why we chose it. It’s a fitting name. He is a happy little man. He used to suck his thumb. Takes after me. I did as a kid, too. He still can’t pronounce his r’s. He can put together a 100 piece puzzle in under two minutes without any help.
Hyrum.
Hyrum loves to cuddle with me. I will be sad when he can no longer do this.
He is sensitive and popular at school. His best friend’s name is Lex. Isn’t that a cool best friend name?
Hyrum and Asher are best friends. They do fight and make each other cry, but they are brothers, nearly twins. Soon after Hyrum was born, we both felt that it was time to have another. I am amazed that I was able to get pregnant so quickly and without much effort, I knew it was because they were supposed to be together.
They are boys in the usual sense. They play cars, trains, run, jump, wrestle. They read books.
One ritual that our family has is to read books every morning. As soon as each one gets up, they get a few books, a small bowl of dry cereal (cheerios, most days) and they sit and read. Sometimes I read to them, sometimes Joseph reads to them.
I read an article in the Desert News today that made me be okay with the fact that all Asher wants to read are non-fiction books about dinosaurs, trucks, and spiders. I find these books dull myself, but as I read DINOSAURS! for the third time in two days this morning, I realized, it’s not about what I find interesting. It is about reading what interests him so that he will learn to love reading. A hard pill to swallow sometimes, since I can’t even pronounce ceolophysis (atriassic dinosaur) or archaeopteryx (the first bird), but despite my inability to do so, Asher remains riveted by the subject matter. I cannot relate. I never thought dinosaurs were cool, but according to Joseph, every boy loves ’em.
Hyrum has been somewhat of a reluctant reader (an understatement). He’s the runt of his 1st grade class since his birthday is in late summer. We home schooled him last year, and he was not excited or even interested (sometimes downright hostile) about learning how to read. We decided the best approach was to read to him as much as possible, since he loves books, he just hadn’t latched onto this idea of learning how to read. We figured eventually he would be interested in learning to read himself.
Hyrum know reads with proficiency, and meets 1st grade standards, but he remains reluctant.
I still hold to the opinion that the best approach is find books, I don’t care if it’s about Spiderman, cars, Toy Story, whatever (anything but the dreaded Sponge Bob books, please NO Sponge Bob!), that interest him, and with enough support, encouragement and exposure, reading will become something that is a part of them.
As the article outlines, boys are at much greater risk than girls for falling behind academically, particularly in the area of reading and writing. Poor reading skills and involvement are often precursors to later in life success. These facts can seem a bit depressing, but I think the solution is to embrace their interests and make reading about them and their interests.
Bring on the dinosaur books, the Harry Potters, the comic books. Whatever it takes, to get them to read, I will be there supporting it 100%.
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