Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Benjamin's Talents

I decided to brag a little, (everyone's doing it!) Benjamin just finished his swim lessons for this summer. He did so well! We kind of got a late start this time and just barely got him in the last session. He didn't shy away from anything they asked him to do and passed with flying colors. We swam some more that day and it was fun to watch him diving for rings. He also wanted to jump off the diving board. I was in the water to help him if he needed it, but he swam all the way to the side by himself.

So, this is him jumping in with this floaty thing. See his great teacher - they had so much enthusiasm, I was really impressed with the outdoor pool (we did indoor pool last year).
I tried to get a picture of him jumping off the diving board when they were testing out life jackets. He was so quick! I got a picture of him running down the board, the next turn I got him as he landed in the water. He had no fear!
So, here we are with soccer. Last year was a trial. I guess that word "trial" can be used two different ways here, and it fits either way. It was pretty bad. I didn't think he'd ever be able to do team sports. He cried whenever someone else got a chance to kick the ball, or score -even if they were on his team! I loved how they had the games. We'd go on Friday eves to practice and scrimmage. Then we were done til the next Friday. They were late telling us when it started and we went on vacation, so we ended up only doing about 6 of them. I guess I have selective memory, because we decided to try again this year.
We're on our 3rd week of soccer, we've had one game. They put the kids on teams of 5, and told us "we don't have a coach for your kid yet." (1st time I wanted to get a refund and call it quits.) There ended up being 3 different dads willing to assist, so we have 3 "coaches" now. The first 2 practices we joined with a couple of other teams. At the 3rd practice I didn't see the "coaches" but Ben was there and practiced. When I showed up for the 4th practice, the lady in charge told me that our team switched their practice time. (Wanting to quit again!) So we went to Walmart for an hour (looking for shin guards, again!) and then back to the field for our practice. They had their first game on Saturday. Ben's team lost, but he was okay with it. On Monday when it was time to get ready to go, he told me he didn't want to do soccer anymore. I made him go anyway and he had a great time. He would really like to try gymnastics, even more now that he's seen it on the Olympics. I'll still try to work that out for him later on this year or next year. We've got games every Saturday (except 2) until the end of October! I had no idea it was so long! I don't know how mom's do that with more than one child all year long! To me that's a little crazy. (And hopefully I don't go crazy before it's over!)
Okay, so this isn't so much a talent as it is something he just loves to do. Whenever I pull out the camera for pictures he automatically makes a face. I've deleted sooo many pictures off my camera because we already had enough goofy ones! So, no he's not just sucking the popsicle, he stopped to pose this way. I've got him posing blowing out a marshmallow, with his tongue out, cocking his head to the side, falling down, with his fingers in his ears, one leg up, etc., etc., etc.
I think Ben is so bright (I'm not biased or anything!) He learned rather quickly how to write all of the upper-case alphabet and then started sounding out words (thank you leapfrog!) This was a message for me that he did back in May. If you're struggling it says: FOUR MOM THIS IS U TRAIN FOR MOM. I probably told him how to spell train, but the rest would have been him. It's fun to see how he sounds out some words. One day he wrote down as many B words as he could think of. BUKIT =bucket, BRICK, BELT, BLONE =bologna, BUTR =butter, BRED =bread. My challenge is teaching him why it's not the way it sounds. Like wut is spelled what, but phonetically should be spelled like watt. For those of you who don't know yet, I've decided to give homeschooling a try. You can see what I'm up against! I don't know how to explain it to him other than to say, "that's just how it is, it doesn't make sense."

2 comments:

Kristine said...

I hear you on the picture taking, our Jordan does the same thing and I have tons of deleted photos too, I guess it's just too hard to smile!

Nancy said...

I was showing Tyler these pictures of Ben and he says he wants to come to your house and play "tars" (cars). He wasn't so sure about the messy face on Ben though; he looked a little worried about it :) He loved playing at your house when we were there and playing with Ben. He tells me about it all the time. Good luck with the schooling and soccer.