Wuopsie Daysie!

It seems that with all the settling in that's been going on over here the past two months, we have sort of, um, neglected Baxter's academic skills. I mean, to put this in perspective, the kid reads for many long periods every day. He's graduated to mysteries and Calvin and Hobbes comic books this summer, so we spend much of the day explaining concepts like what it means to get mugged. The other day I was handing out alphabet cookies and he said, "Oooh, I hope there's an 'H' for homicidal!" Thanks, Calvin, you little nut. So don't get me wrong: it's not that he's been vegging out in front of the TV all summer or anything.

But you see, Baxter's fine motor skills have always been a bit slower to develop than the rest of his abilities. He was never big on drawing and writing and it was the one area his kindergarten teacher wanted us to spend extra time on last year. So we did. And she thought he could really use some extra practice over the summer. So, um, we didn't.

I had the best of intentions, I swear to you. In his "quiet time" bin were handwriting books he had chosen early in the summer, and I was full of good ideas about games we could play to make writing and drawing fun. It's just that he resisted these things and I guess I was choosing my battles when the going got tough here. Which is all well and good until it's the week before school and I can't remember the last time he wrote something. Anything. I flash back to how he signed our annivesary card a couple weeks ago when asked to sign it from himself and Lyle. It said, "B+L". Hilarious, yes? We thought so, although we shook our heads over his obvious avoidant behavior.

So tonight, motivated by some new back-to-school pencils, an electric pencil sharpener, and a new writing tablet, he allowed me to talk him into some writing. I jokingly said, just to get him warmed up with something easy, "I wonder if you remember how to write your whole name - it's been months since you had to do it!" And what do you think happened? He wrote "Baxter Sadler Gorden". I'm not even kidding. Good Lerd! Holey Shet!

Thank goodness he was able to find humor in this situation and was willing to do some more writing after that, jokingly spelling words like "cat" wrong just to make us laugh. All I can hope is that there has been some natural maturation in this area these past few months and we haven't totally set him up for a hord tyme in skool this year.

On the bright side, he demonstrated tonight that he can throw a mean spiral - turns out he's the first male in history whose explanations about football I will listen to.