When Chris was deployed he went to the $5 barber for his haircuts. What you are about to see is standard post-buzz treatment. The first time it happened, Chris almost punched the guy thinking that he was making a move on him. I’m just gald he got a little affection while he was deployed.

Here, I pay through the nose for a simple cut (blow dry extra), and there’s no bonus.

I went to my very first parent teacher conferences today. Jonas is doing alright. Not great, but not horrible, either. His progress is definite and he is on his way. The teacher and I are in agreement that his choice to focus or not is his biggest hindrance, and his uncooperative nature has led his current scores to look worse than they really are.

I would have worried about those scores if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to be asked to review Jump Start World 1st Grade. This awesome PC game arrived in my mailbox totally unexpected. In fact- I totally forgot that I had agreed to review it -ha! As luck would have it, it showed up the last day of school before the week long Thanksgiving break that I was certain was going to put Jonas and his mischievous little mind out of my good graces for the holiday season. That Friday had gone particularly bad at school, and I was really quite worried about his progress.

Cue the game. Jonas’ mood improved substantially upon seeing the box, and mine improved as I watched him play the game with no assistance from me. (Always a plus, I am totally against kiddie learning games that require mom to sit there and hold their hand. I can do that without paying thirty bucks for some “baby-smart” aide.) This game gives vocal commands and is set up simply enough for a five year old to use it. It also has graphics impressive enough to get his attention, and just enough character options to keep him engaged. Jonas was hooked.

I let him play on his own for a day before I walked over and asked to see the reading section of the game. Jonas quickly showed me a game that said letter sounds and asked him to identify the letter they matched with. I watched, feeling very relieved, as he correctly identified 25 out of 26 letter sounds correctly- in about 90 seconds. That he could do this with so much proficiency was news to me since he is so uncooperative with the testing. Seeing him excel at this and the other games gave me enough information on my son and what he knew to walk into his conference totally knowing what he did and didn’t know- and that felt good. There were no surprises.

I was also happy enough with the game to pick up a copy for my niece for Christmas, really good tools should be shared, right?

Another bonus to this is that Jonas has been very quick to share with Maggie who can attempt to play some of the easier games. He has also been more willing to do his homework and show off his knowledge. I think he was hitting a rut where all of the rote learning was wearing on him, and this brought a little bit of fun back to the table. Mama’s feeling good.