Gracie'isms

On this past Thursday, we had a meeting with Gracie's kindergarten teacher to evaluate her progress. She was noticeably behind when she started, but she has climbed up to average in just a few short weeks. Average is an interesting word in this situation. The give them little tests (kindergarten proficiency test!!, I didn't get the memo or I don't remember kindergarten being that strict already) to see where they are. The don't give them grades however, just satisfactory, unsatisfactory or incomplete. They do get scores, they are expected to know 16 of 26 letters on sight, Gracie knew 25 I think, but she knows them all on sight, she just gets bored before you reach 26. She scored like this on most of the test, but she only got 3 or so letter sounds correct, and 1 or so sight words correct. So, the average is to say she kicked butt half the time and knew nothing half the time, which averaged out to average. I feel good about this because at least part of what she is terrible at is speech related. She sounds like a Chinese redneck from the hills of Kentucky when she talks ( a little of mommas influence in there) She is signed up for speech therapy at this point. To our surprise, she is already in ESL classes (English as a second language) Angie might disagree but this seems logical to me since her first 15 months were spent hearing only Chinese. This early formative time is when (by my understanding) the initial pattern programing takes place, and she is trying to unlearn that programming now. Her vocabulary is huge, but the letter formations of many consonants are not there. I would love to see how fast she could pick up her native Mandarin. One of my favorite things to do is ask her "who is the Governor of California?"

The answer started off as "Are Nold Snort Cher Water"

It has progressed to "Are Nold Swarts-o- Nader"

If I can get the "Schw" part to stick she'll have it, but I love the "Snort Cher Water" just because its cute.

(she says Arnold just like he does, thus the spelling is to represent that nasal tone. She will also say "I'll be back" just like him)

Angie and I had a rare date night this weekend as well. A dear friend came from our old church to babysit and spend the night with us. She is a lovely person and a beautiful girl of 15 years old. She was one of Angie's youth group and one of my Sunday school girls. Gracie loves her and had a great time having her to play with Saturday night and Sunday morning. She attended our new church with us on Sunday morning and I think she will be coming back just to go to church with us. She really enjoyed it.

Angie and I went to see the movie "The Express" Awesome movie. In light of last weeks events it was a timely movie. It points out a lot of things, just how far we have come since 1961 is amazing. Knowing we are not there yet is sobering. A great movie, would be awesome to take a youth group to (in my opinion).

One final note, Angie is having surgery on Friday and will be laid up for some weeks after that. I am staying home for the 1st week to play mister mom. I will be in charge of all the meals, getting Gracie to and from school, cheer practice, games, play dates etc. I will also be in charge of getting her dressed appropriately and fixing her hair. As a bald man with 10 thumbs this will prove a challenge. The neighborhood families we are blessed to live among as well as our church family will be helping out with lunches and Gracie in the following weeks. I will be depending on the other cheer moms to help me with the hair thing for games.