Alex's homework.

I admit it. I tend to skew toward Meredith when writing posts. I really can’t help it. The girl is a wealth of material. That isn’t to say she is in anyway my favorite child, I truly love them both equally with fervor. With Alex away at school all day coupled with the fact that Alex is pretty even keeled---except when he’s throwing temper tantrums that would show any two –year-old a thing or two. Who wants to hear about those? I know don’t want to relive them. I knew I’d probably write more about Merdi this week, because like our friend Annie, she likes to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the celebration out as long as possible. However, Alex unintentionally wrote a post for me, by himself.

In this week’s, “New from the Pad,” first grade newsletter, Alex’s teacher mentioned they were given a progress test and asked to take it independently. Normally, she reads the questions and answers to them and they select their response. We’re inching closer to second grade and we all want them to be prepared, so she cut the cord. Good for her! I wondered how bad the results must be to merit a warning they were coming home today and the teacher stressed several times that the tests were administered independently.

Brandon and I were proud when we pulled Alex’s test out of his holder folder. He answered 12/15 correctly and was in the expected range of 11/15. Hooray! Not perfect, but we’ll take it. We may even buy ice cream. When we read through Alex’s answers we were glad we read them without him in earshot. We were laughing. Inappropriately. Here’s a sampling:

I pulled the pre-test out of his backpack next and began to sense a pattern. Alex is a decent reader. He is a whiz at math, but reading is not his favorite thing. He can read, and quite well when he wants to, he just doesn’t like to take the time to slow down and sound out words. He will employ any context clue available or he will opt for one of his very honest test answers. We also roared when we read his answer to “In this story, what is a bank?” Alex is Mr. Wall Street, and to him, “bank” means one, glorious thing. Oops. We better take him fishing.

I had no idea just how funny the contents of his backpack were until I pulled out his “100 Days Book.” There were sentences to complete and Alex did so, with legible hand writing, which is something to celebrate. His responses were classic Alex.

I wish I had 100 dogs. (The thought alone puts me over the edge.)
I would not like 100 aliens. (Yikes! Me either.)
I could eat 100 sushi. (Yes he could, and he’d put it on my tab.)

And my personal favorite:

Having 100 kids could really be a problem.