Happy Birthday, Early Bird!: A look back

A few weeks ago, Early Bird turned five years old.

Gosh, I love this kid! He's crazy and imaginative and sweet and loving and flat out ridiculous at times.

1 month old/ -1 month corrected age

He was my first preemie, and I learned a lot from that experience. He's doing so well health wise. I'm so grateful because I know a lot of kids born at 32 weeks end up with lasting issues.

He's also my early learner; my early reader. Two years ago I was freaking out over my not-yet-3-year-old learning to read. It took me a while to get over the shock and then the consuming worry that I was going to somehow screw this up. It's hard to believe that two years have passed. It's been easy and hard all at the same time. Once again, we're blessed because unlike many gifted kids, Early Bird has not manifested any of the often accompanying issues and difficulties. At times I've struggled with treating him like his age rather than his reading level. But the older he has gotten, the less this has been an issue. Having an older brother to emulate, he is maturing faster than Builder Boy did. Which makes me a little sad. He was little for so little time and then BAM! reading and all sorts of other developmental intellectual advancements that just made him seem so much older than he actually was.

I recently guest posted on Dusty's blog, To the Moon and Back on how we adapted curricula for an early learner. Except for math and handwriting, Early Bird is doing everything Builder Boy is doing school-wise. Which means he started 2nd grade work when he was 4 1/2, but we're calling it kindergarten.

And my fears? Well, he's learning whether I'm teaching or not. I learned that during my pregnancy with Lady Bug. He's picked up a few things incorrectly, like the pronunciation of "jalapeno," but we're correcting it without too much hassle. His reading grew in leaps and bounds beyond what we've done in our reading curriculum, but I'm still going over every single lesson so that there are no gaps. We've found one or two gaps, so I'm glad we are doing that. And thankfully he doesn't mind that the lesson is super easy and takes very little time, since it's so far behind him. While at times I think I should be stretching him more, I'm happy with his progress.

Happy Birthday, big boy. :)

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