Farmer Boy complete!

Brandon finally finished Farmer Boy. He'd been chipping away at it steadily for about the last 8 weeks. . . but we bought him Diary of a Wimpy Kid and told him he couldn't start that one until he finished the one he was on. . . He read the rest of it (about 40 pages that would have otherwise taken a whole school-week) in a weekend and then directly - the *moment* he finished it picked up Diary of a Wimpy Kid and read the first 30 pages. (This is not nearly as impressive as it sounds since the font is pretty big and at least half of every page is covered with cartoon-like drawings).

But the funny thing is that Brandon couldn't bring himself to destroy Farmer Boy. I think like with Ashley, the book represented 8 weeks of hard work. An accomplishment. He gave it to me as a keepsake and said maybe I would want to remember the time he read Farmer Boy.

. . .And that's so totally like me. . . .to write something about how old he was and how long it took him to read in the cover (though that would be difficult in this case since the cover is long-gone), and keep it in my treasure box forever.

It's good he got the notion to finish the book because he'd been sick since last Wednesday and got behind on his reading minutes for school. I'll have to figure out how to explain to Mrs. Barnes why this kid who hates reading managed to read for nearly 5 hours over the weekend.

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Karlon was in the hospital with a bizarre case of cellulitis for a couple of days last week. It started with fever that just kept getting higher and higher. He was getting ready to go to the doctor (that's when you know he really, really feels bad) and saw in the mirror what he thought had been a bruise, but it was bright, fiery red. Strangely, there was no scratch or bug bite so it's a mystery how the infection started. He said he thought it must be something he picked up while doing all that hard work I'd made him . . .er, ever so gently suggested he. . . do in the back yard the weekend before. Great.

Anyway, he's back home now and things are practically back to normal. He'll be on some strong antibiotics for a while longer, but other than that, he's back to his old self again :)