It means excited-like.

It was a green card kind of day, so Turner and I went to the park to swing after school. Usually homework is our first stop. It was hot, and I was in dress clothes, but we got in a solid forty minutes of swinging. Then like lighting Turner was out of the swing and ready for home. He needed to potty. At home we had snacks, and Turner “adjusted” his squirrel game. The squirrel game is a big piece of white paper on which he has created a board game. There are three squirrel figures, and you move these around a board. There is a “glider” where your squirrel can skip ahead, moving through the air over trees and other things. He has names for the different stops a squirrel can take, each has a story. And, there is a complex set of (shifting) rules.

After the gym and tutoring, Turner and I played Simon Says at MagPies while we waited for pizzas. At one point, Simon said to Turner "Read this word." And he did it. It wasn’t one of the words we’ve been working on, sight words. He just sounded it out. And just like that, the word “for” turned into other words: west, on, and a few others I can’t remember. I was so proud of him.

Over pizza, Turner told me he got two new books today from Ms. Cipolla. She has been sending books home with him to borrow. I assume all the kids get to do this, but Turner takes this responsibility pretty seriously, the caring for Ms. Cipolla’s books. We’ve been reading the books to him and then we return them after a few days. He also creates these books that contain all of his sight words, and he reads those to us. I saw a cow. I saw a dog. That sort of thing. So, tonight he said he wanted to read to me. I asked him what the books were about and he said it would be a surprise.

When he was in the bathtub, I said to him, “I’m going to tell Dad that you want me to wipe your bottom until you’re eighteen.” He had said this earlier in the day, angry with me because I would not come “check” him. We talked about how he goes potty at school independently, and that he can do that at home too. My least favorite parent task is butt duty.

Turner said, “I want you to check me not wipe.”

“Well whatever. I think Dad will smile about it. You made some convincing arguments.”

He got quiet. I rubbed his face with a wash cloth, a chore he hates, and he said, “Oh Mom! You’re hurting my molars.”

We make it to bedtime and Turner chooses What Are You? to read first. He puts his finger at the base of each word and moves across the cover.

What are You? I am a cow. I am a horse. I am a sheep. I am a pig. I am a chicken. [He stumbled here. I told gave him the “ch”and he remembered the word.] I am a duck. What are you?

The next book: Pets.

I had a frog. It jumped out of its bowl. I had a mouse. It ran back to its hole. I had a fish. It ate too much. I had a rabbit. It got out of its hutch. I had a parrot. It flew out the door. I wanted a dog . . . but Mom said, “No more!”

He raised his voice as he read the last sentence. Then he smiled at me, clearly proud of himself. I tried to inconspicuously put the water on my cheeks down my sleeve. He points to the exclamation point, “You see that. It means you read that line excited. Like you are surprised but not always mad. It is an exclamation.”

Tonight, Andy read with him. We met on the stairs and he said, “He really sounded out the words. He read it!”

I said, “I know!” That's excited-like.