HE DID IT!!!!!!
These pictures, taken not quite a year ago, still make me well up with happiness.
At this time last year, Zeke was still reading early readers haltingly, still painstakingly trying to speak the blend "st" as one smooth sound (let alone "str" and "spl" and others, all of which seemed impossibly out of reach), and still needing his mama by his side to read every last content area aloud to him.
Tintin saved us all.
In the fall of 2021, we saw a picture on my sister's blog that set Zeke's heart racing. On a dressertop in her boys' room, there sat a gorgeous collection of Tintin comic books a doting uncle had given them. I didn't know such a thing existed, and Zeke swooned. I looked it up, only to find it cost $125, and then gave up the notion of getting it for the boys.
A few weeks later, though, Zeke was still talking about it, and I struck a deal that I knew he could never keep. If by his April birthday he learned to read an entire Tintin book independently, multisyllabic words and all, I'd buy him the Tintin collection as a gift to end all gifts. (For context, most years I only give the younger children things I've picked up at the ten-cent book sale and rummage sales, so this was a Big Deal.) By January of 2022, even with practicing speech throughout the day, he still couldn't articulate "st" and three-letter blends, and reading any word beyond simple ones was still beyond his grasp, so although I encouraged him outwardly, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to happen.
A few weeks later, though, Zeke was still talking about it, and I struck a deal that I knew he could never keep. If by his April birthday he learned to read an entire Tintin book independently, multisyllabic words and all, I'd buy him the Tintin collection as a gift to end all gifts. (For context, most years I only give the younger children things I've picked up at the ten-cent book sale and rummage sales, so this was a Big Deal.) By January of 2022, even with practicing speech throughout the day, he still couldn't articulate "st" and three-letter blends, and reading any word beyond simple ones was still beyond his grasp, so although I encouraged him outwardly, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to happen.
And then it did.
Zeke worked and worked and worked, and just in time God graciously gave him that giant leap in ability that happens occasionally. Due to his articulation struggles, Zeke's happened 3-4 years later than it did with his older siblings, but it happened! I felt like crying when I heard him read "Blistering barnacles!" for the first time. Seriously, there I was weeping in a corner.
He finished about a week before his birthday, I ordered the gold-plated collection the same day, and it arrived a couple of days before his birthday. He opened it as soon as he got in the door and began reading immediately, not even bothering to make his way to the living room couch for an hour or so.
So here's my plug for that outrageously priced Tintin collection: it's worth every penny and then some!!!
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