"Kid-legs" (inside joke, read on)

Thanks to everyone for praying for Ryan's first weeks of school. He is settling in very well. This smaller and Christian environment was great for him. Everyone has been welcoming and gracious. He has been doing fantastic with his school work. Everyday after school we sit down at the table and review what he brings home, do the homework and study concepts if needed. He's had a test in virtually every subject. His first test was in English and he got a 90! I was so excited and so thrilled. He studied very hard, he's learning and memorizing well when I put things on note cards for him. He's learning so much, how to take notes, how to listen, how to keep up with assignments, how to do homework, how to change classrooms, how to get books and get to the next class within 5 minutes, how to read directions, how to study... it makes me tired, but he's had a great attitude. He also got a 100 on a history test. He has struggled initially on science and vocabulary tests, but goodness, those words are just so foreign to him, they aren't everyday common conversational English. It's like this, if you put 20 Chinese words in front of me and told me the Chinese meaning and I needed to memorize them, it would be very difficult for me. I'd need to learn to recognize the word by sight, memorize how to say it properly, know how to spell it and know it's meaning! Yeah, exactly, feel his pain? In fact, he studied so hard for his health test last week and didn't get a good grade. I told him I was disappointed, NOT in him, but he worked so hard, I wished he had more to show for it grade-wise. He memorized 46 index cards of material. His response... "yeah mom, but look at all the stuff I know now that I didn't know before." If only we could all see things that way. His payoff didn't come via the grade, it came because he KNEW he was smarter for learning so many new things. He likes to use the word "symbiosis" now just for fun!

Funny story. I was teaching him where the adrenal glads are located. For those of you who haven't had 7th grade health in a while, they are above the kidneys. He didn't know what a kidney was. So, to teach him, I start with sounding the word correctly using visuals and phonetics. With kidney, I told him "kid" and pointed to the "knees." Later, as we reviewed the material, we got around to the adrenal glands/kidney question. Here's the conversation:

Mom- Ryan, where are the adrenal glands located?

Ryan- Well, let's see... hummm... (the universal sound of thinking)........ kid.......... kid........... the kid legs!

Mom- (laughing hysterically, virtually crying I'm laughing so hard, almost falling out of the chair)

Get it? Kid-knees.... couldn't remember the knees part... knew it had something to do with lower extremities..... kid-legs.

The kidneys will forever be the kid-legs in this house! Bless his heart, he's just so precious sometimes.