Obviously, I haven't updated in a long time. We're finally settled in our new house in the country. We all love it here. I can't begin to describe how different our lives are becoming since we've moved here. So far, in our own yard, we've seen: deer, turkey, a 5 foot long black rat snake and a really cool variety of insect life. We're on 4 acres but we're in the middle of about 100 mostly undeveloped acres. I find myself secretly hoping that no one else builds here for a very long time. It's like our own private paradise.

B calmed down a good bit. He was doing his blinking thing that he does when he's nervous. That started dramatically calming down when my in-laws came to visit. Then, with the move, both kids were much much better. They can now officially make as much noise as they want and they have space to spread out. It's been good for all of us.

In the academic world, B has really taken off with reading. With great difficulty, I convinced him several months ago that he could read a simple Dr Seuss book. He was convinced he could not. He read "Put me in the Zoo" and he was as surprised as anyone that he was actually reading it. That seem to open the floodgates. He started reading everything around us and his confidence started going up.

He still doesn't sit and read but when he does read stuff, he reads it with greater ease and speed. And every time, his confidence goes up. From the back of a Dick King Smith book yesterday, he easily read: "When Ben finds a bag of gold coins under the floorboards, he can hardly believe his luck. But it's Treasure Trove, and therefore belongs to the Queen, not the finder. How can Ben keep his treasure a secret, and will he ever be able to claim it for himself? A magical tale from master storyteller and award-winning author, Dick King-Smith."

The ONLY words he needed help with were: "therefore" and "claim". Oh, and he read "master" as "mister" initially. I don't think that's too bad for a 7 year old who has pretty much received zero reading instruction. I kept meaning to do word walls and such but I never got around to it. He's self-taught, basically, and I have no idea how he did it. He still writes his little story books and while he still writes phonetically, much of his spelling has improved.

He also read a section for "Undercover T-Rex", which was quite technical. And he read me some bits from "Life on Earth: the story of evolution." He still feels nervous or unready to sit and read to himself so we don't make a fuss about it. But he's getting more and more relaxed. We have a feeling that once he takes off with it, that will be it.

I got out some "Choose your Own Adventure" books that belonged to me when I was little. Both dh and I devoured those as kids. I told B that if he could read one of those on his own, that I would gladly buy him as many as he wanted. Of course, I will help him with random words.

I have lots more to post about our summer activities but I'm going to leave this for now.