First book

Y read his first book yesterday!  It was a Bob book, the first one in the first set, which only requires knowledge of a few letter sounds (short a, M, T, and S).  He actually knows a lot of his consonant sounds already but we are working on vowels right now.  He can sound out each individual letter but really struggles with getting from sounding out to knowing what the word is, if that makes sense.  So he requires quite a bit of hand holding right now which is totally to be expected I'm sure, and it is fine. He wants to do it so much but he gets so frustrated so I usually encourage him to take a break before he thinks he is ready for one.

This is what it is like when he is trying to read the word "mat"
Him: (making the letter sounds) "M-A-T...M-A-T...M-A-T...Sam?"

The first time he read the book he actually did the best, I think at this point he is trying to guess what the words are based on the words he knows that are in the book, maybe.  I don't know.  I looked up some techniques to try (thank you internet!) so we will give that a go tomorrow maybe.

The C-monster went back to school today after two weeks off for Christmas, and then one more day off for bitter cold weather. I ought to be used to it by now, but I am always amazed at how quiet the house is when he is gone.  He is so smart but I'm afraid he will be my most difficult student because of his mouth and energy level.  Over break we did some "school" things and I felt like I was constantly asking him to shush so I could talk.  Not like I talked for hours at a time, I just wanted 2 or 3 minutes to go by without being interrupted!  Seriously everything we did lasted maybe a total of 15 minutes each day. I am going to have to figure something out, I think. It didn't help that it was so very cold that they couldn't really play outside because of the weather.  I wonder if part of his talking was because he wanted to show his brother and sister that he already knew these things, kind of showing off to them in a way.  Even though I told him he didn't have to do what we were doing he still wanted to do it.

Ben is sleeping so much better. Two nights ago he woke up once at 9:30 before I went to bed, and didn't wake up again until 6:45 that morning!  That was the first entire night of sleep I have gotten since January 17 2013, and it was pretty awesome. Sad to say I still needed a nap that day, but hey, what are you gonna do right?  I don't know how long this residual tiredness will hang on.  Last night he was only up once at 2:30 a.m., which again was pretty awesome.

There have been a couple of nights where I just let him cry a little bit. There were a couple of times where he woke, I nursed him, knew he wasn't hungry, and laid him back down but he fussed. So I pick him back up and he immediately quieted, rocked him for a bit, put him back down, and he cries. He just wanted to be held, but it was 2 a.m. and sorry bud, it's sleep time. I felt kind of bad about it, but since then he has really slept better. I don't mind getting up with him once a night at this point, even though he's almost one. If I let him cry he usually puts himself back to sleep within 15 minutes so I don't feel too bad about that, though the first time I let him do it I cried myself to sleep as well.

Just thinking back 6 or 7 months ago I would cry because I was so, so tired, and Ben would only nurse to sleep, and had to be held while he was sleeping, and still woke up every 1.5-2 hours every single night for nights and nights on end...I thought it would never ever end, and even if it did end, I would probably die of tiredness before it was over. I'm so thankful for SLEEP!

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