Who Knew?

I finally got to volunteer in son D's Kindergarten class today. It is a wonderful class full of amazing children. My favorite part was working with a delightful little girl who didn't seem to speak much English. But we did just fine. We were counting and identifying numbers. Every time she got one right, her entire face would light up and she would burst into applause for herself.

Afterward, I was speaking with his teacher and she was talking about how challenging it was to teach to the various levels in the classroom. She said, "we've got kids who just came to the country on one hand, and kids like 'son D' who are reading already, on the other."

I corrected her, and said, "You mean another child, right? Son D. can't read." She gave me a puzzled look and told me that, indeed, he was reading. I explained that we spent a lot of time reading at home, but he had yet to read in our presence. She laughed and told me that her second child loved to be read to so much that he too, hid his ability to read to himself.

Son D's favorite part of the morning is when I walked his class down the stairs for recess. Correction: they ran down the stairs, while I attempted to move my very sore legs down a staircase. Going down stairs is never a good idea the day after a marathon. He seems to find my temporary muscle soreness quite comical.

But the marathon went so well that I'm still walking on air, so I can hardly complain about the lactic acid. I beat my fastest previous time (set when I was in my 20s.) However, I'm finding that a 40 year old's marathon recovery is a bit different than a 20-somethings recovery. Pass the ibuprofen.