I don’t have the heart to correct him on some nights… Because honestly? I’d rather he was prayer for her to feel better than knowing I don’t have her around anymore. More often than not, Cam catches himself and instead he blesses his Aunt Jan “who is now in heaven.” It’s very sweet and heartbreaking for me.

Cam wanted spiky hair one day before school.

I tried to get Cam to work on his typing skills… because I seriously think he could enjoy contributing to this blog on his own this summer.

Today Cameron went to work with me for a little bit before he interviewed at a local independent school. We decided to look into it… even though at this point, we haven’t found the right funding opportunity. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed. I really think he’d be a perfect fit for the school.

He had fun meeting the third grade teacher. She gave him an assessment test, had me read a book (one he’d read before – the Spiderwick Chronicles Field Guide) and he got quizzed on his Harry Potter knowledge (he’s scary with all the little details he knows). They talked about other things… but I didn’t get all of the details about the experience. Cameron thought the place was cool. I guess we’ll see.

He is wrapping up his school year – and he seems to be a bit more relaxed lately. His class work is going pretty well. He still has his days, but I feel like he’s headed in the right direction.

He and I have come up with a number of projects we’ve planned for the summer:

1) Read Fantastic Mr. Fox and then see the movie (we haven’t seen it yet but I hear it’s awesome)
2) Compose a song on the piano
3) Finish the last two books of Harry Potter

I’m sure we’ll add to the list, but I think these are doable. I have a little side goal of getting Cameron to write more with a keyboard. His three sentences at the top of this blog post had a more fictional and fun group of sentences… but it didn’t make a lot of sense. And he didn’t know how to clarify it. So he started over with a few sentences about our sleepover trip to the Field Museum later in June. I hope we’ll see more and more Cameron writings here soon.

Cam played the "Old Worm" in his class play

Cameron has a short attention span in a classroom full of 25 kids. So most of the school year we’ve struggled with keeping him on task without his teacher needing to remind him every second. When it felt like we reached the last straw, I asked Cam’s teacher for a way so I can find out how Cam did each day.

She came up with a grid idea where there’s a list of what they do each day (it’s doesn’t vary much through the week) and Cameron has to put an X or a check mark for things he completes or doesn’t complete. At the end of the day, Cam has to get his teacher to look through the list to see if he told the truth and then she signs it. (And she leaves a message if needed) Then Cam has to bring it home so I or his Dad can sign it. Since we’ve put him in charge of self-regulating his work, he’s made really big improvements in his academic work.

It’s a relief to have found a key to reaching the boy.

Another awesome development, Cameron’s really gotten interested in reading “boy” books. That’s books like Harry Potter (we’re on book 5), Stink, Magic Treehouse and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I think he’s read so many books with enjoyable dialogue, he’s transitioned that reading into the way he writes in school. He has an incredibly conversational writing style. He doesn’t always write simple descriptive sentences to set the scene. He still needs to remember capital letters and punctuation. But seriously, I’m so thrilled with his writing.

Here’s an example of his take on running in the St. Louis Kids Fun Run:

The Run
By Cameron
4-15-10

“Ready set GO!” Wait. That’s the middle. Ok. Here’s how it started.

“Yawn! Buh boggly bop?” AHH? Yeah horrible but funny start.

1 hour later we were at Forest Park. 1 hour later my sister Jordan was running a 50 yard dash. It only took 30 seconds. 2 more minutes later that guy who says “ready set go” he said the 3 words.

I started a little too fast because in the middle I took a break. Then about 1 minute later I finished. My mom was SO happy.

That was my amazing run.

Cam had a ton of fun… and his friend were pretty darn good. It was a really long bash. The kids arrived in the evening, had pizza and cake, played and watched a couple of Harry Potter movies. Cam and one of his friends were the only ones left awake at the end of the second movie. They all slept a little bit, ate doughnuts in the morning and played around for a while. I think it was a success… But an exhausting one nonetheless!

Cam ran in the St. Louis Kids’ Fun Run over the weekend – a full half mile! As you can see he was FAST at the start of the race. He had focus, he had drive… And he was SO tired by the end. But you know what? He finished!! And he earned a medal:

It was great to see him have fun with running. He’s pretty darn proud of the experience… although he wishes his medal wasn’t plastic but actual medal like the one his mom earned by running in the marathon relay. Either way, he’s been proud to show if off!

I was incredibly proud. I didn’t expect Cam to have a central role in the show and honestly, I didn’t expect him to enjoy the week so much. I’m so happy he’s happy.

Before I headed out to work, Cam made me stay to conduct his yearly birthday interview. Here’s his 8 year old interview from this morning:

UPDATE: Here’s our official happy birthday cake singing:

Cameron has an assignment this week to create a life timeline of some of the biggest and interesting moments of his life. So we started digging into this blog and all of the old pictures we have collected through the years. The trickiest part is I have stored all of my digital pictures of him on Zip disks… Yeah. Old school storage. And that got me thinking that I need to migrate all of those photos into some other location before they all go away. They’ll either get lost, get old or something terrible. I have so many of Jordan’s baby pictures collected into our Flickr account… Cameron’s first three or so years are saved in external drives and Zip disks. I can’t easily search or even find them to show him what happened during those times.

So… I’m on a new quest. So far, I’ve taken his first month of his life from the disks and saved them to a good external hard drive AND to an online storage space called Dropbox. I’m hoping these two locations will work until I decide to create a new Flickr account or just put really old photos into our current account. I haven’t decided.

Telling Cameron old stories about when he was a baby and a toddler were so funny. I read him old posts about when he was two, three and four years old on this blog. He LOVED hearing the funny things he used to say or the crazy ways he would drive me nuts. (He finds completely new ways to do that now.)

It was fun and a special way to spend an evening with my boy.