Kid B Makes a Discovery... and Contests Galore!

First, a couple of items of interest... at least to me:

1. Book Reviews:

Hubby Sam reviewed five books at his blog, including Andre Agassi's autobiography and Todd Strasser's Wish You Were Dead. If you like to read, check it out.

2. More Chances for Free Books:

My WIFYR (Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers) contest is open until the end of the month. Basically if you're not signed up for this most excellent conference and you sign up before March 31st, and then you leave me a comment telling me you did, you will be entered in a drawing to win one of five signed books! (Chances are very very good you'll win.)

Also, if you tweet about the contest and the workshop, I'll put an entry in for you.

Tweeting/blogging/facebooking: +1 entry
Signing up: +5 entries

You can leave a comment here telling me your entries, or on the original contest post. Yeah, I know. It's confusing. But not really.

Fellow 6-er and #2 Crazy Emily Wing Smith is holding a contest too. You don't even have to register to enter hers. You can tweet about it or blog about it or other easy stuff.

Another fellow 6-er and #4 Crazy Valynne Nagamatsu is doing a contest too.

And again, fellow 6-er and #5 Crazy Kim Reid is in on the action too.

So basically, you can sign up for the conference (or even leave a comment in some cases) and enter all contests!

Coincidentally, if you sign up for Emily Wing Smith's workshop, you'll be hanging with 1/3 of the 6. If you only sign up for the afternoons (a bargain at $125) you'll meet 5/6 of the 6. Sorry if that's confusing, I just love to use fractions to describe social events.

On to the post...

So, if you've been a long-time reader of the blog, you may have deduced I have a boy with special needs. I don't blog about it a lot, but something happened this week that cracked me up.

(Kid B playing the piano, and his cousin Asher digging for treasure)

When you have a kid with special needs, you celebrate every accomplishment just as you would with an average kid. Their little successes might appear smaller, but they're not. You just have to use the right lens.

So we often find ourselves making announcements  like, "Kid B knows where his ears are!" and "Kid B only sang the alphabet song three times today!"

We celebrate every tiny step forward, and we're lucky that he has teachers who join in the celebration and document his progress in a daily journal. 

Nothing comes easy, and little jobs like potty-training last for years, it seems. The journey is arduous, but not without its moments of levity. 

On Kid B's latest progress report, his teacher wrote:

"B's doing much better on the playground. He's actually exploring the equipment... Instead of just playing with the wood chips."

So, after nearly a year, Kid B noticed the playground housed more than woodchips, and he was excited. And it became a milestone. Like: "By 4 years and 3 months of age, child should discover that woodchips are not the funnest part of the playground." He's right on target.

We laughed so hard. I don't know if this is universally funny, or if it's "special needs" funny, or funny ha ha, or funny wah-wah wah. But it's been two days, and I'm still laughing, so I thought I'd share and you can laugh with us.