That is so cool

I need to brag a little bit.  Feel free to move on if you just rolled your eyes.  Mason is learning to read at a pace that I did not think was possible.  It started from our tour of Merryhill, where the teacher said that the goal was to finish the first set of Bob books by the end of the year (16 books, about 10 pages each).  Directly after that I was at Coscto, and whaddaya know, they had the Bob sets for sale - $9.99/set.  Of course, being the obsessive parent that I am, I bought the first two sets.  He finished reading the first set in two weeks!  He is truly reading too.  He is not memorizing.  He is sounding out all of the words, so much so that he sees Zack and says ZA-AA-CC-CC.  

We are on book 10 of the second series and I bought the third series yesterday.  He sat with that new red box at Costco just begging to open it and have new books to read.  You have no idea how happy this makes Steve and I.  We were both obsessive readers as children, and he still is.  I seem to be a little busy for reading, but it is the single most thing that I dream about when I think about a relaxing vacation or something.  

Two funny stories that I have to get written down about reading.  First, the page read "Ten kids did a jig."  The picture had ten clear kid heads and 20 clear kid feet but their bodies were just squiggle lines indicating movement.  Mason first asked about what a jig was and he was clearly upset that it was drawn so poorly.  He looked at me with an annoyed look on his face and said, "The illustrator did that?"  

I just immediately laughed because the tone of his voice was on the lines of "Even I could do that."  Then I thought illustrator is a word that I surely don't remember telling him, so obviously it was from school.  Yeah.  One point for school!  But even then, I am sure it came across, Title, Written By:, and Illustrated By: ...

So he made the jump from "Illustrated by:" means that there was an Illustrator, and that person drew the pictures in the book.  I was impressed.  

Second, he walked in to the bedroom, and I was silently reading to myself.  He said, inquisitively, "Are you brain reading?"  Again this made me laugh, and then I said yes.  He asked if I could teach him to do that, and of course I did.  Once he read one word that way, he looked up and said, "Oh wow, I did it" and then the second word, he repeated the phrase, until he read the whole page.  Then he looked up and, "That is so cool!"  Yes, baby, reading is the coolest thing.