Leon’s “Fine”

I haven’t posted here for a while, but that’s kind of par the course with personal blogs, right?

COVID-19 is still a real concern, but we’ve relaxed somewhat on quarantining ourselves — partially due to knowing more about the virus and how it spreads, but also due to giving up since no one else is taking the virus seriously and it almost feels inevitable that we’ll get it eventually. 

Leon is in the Pre-K room now at school, and he loves his new teacher —and I love her because she sends pictures and videos all day long! His best friend is in the class with him; they’re only 6 days apart so they’ve always conquered the classrooms together.

Leon’s doing great with reading now, and I’ve already had to buy a more difficult set of books for him. He does well with many three- and four-letter words but usually uses context to guess longer words. Although he knows how to sound out each letter, it hasn’t quite “clicked” that he can essentially just use the sounds of a word to read, so he typically relies on sight-reading.

He’s talking up a storm and is suddenly articulating words more clearly! After 3+ years of translating, it’s kind of strange that other people can understand almost everything he says now. He makes sure to remind us about all bad words, “We don’t say ‘XXXX.'” He’s expanded his reprimands to other non-curse words too, sometimes without understanding that they have different meanings in different contexts. I told him a few weeks ago that it’s not acceptable to sarcastically holler “FINE” after I tell him to do something, which he’s more or less taken to heart. I swear, he could be upstairs in bed, and I could whisper the word “fine,” and he’d wake from a deep sleep to come tap me on the shoulder and tell me, “Mommy, we don’t say ‘fine!'”