Not sure if his ears were burning, but they should have been

On Monday we had our first official parent-teacher interview with Mrs. Garrow. It was a ten-minute time slot, so it's not like we had all the time in the world to bring peace to the middle East and find a cure for the common cold; barely enough time to get a sense of what Liam's school days are like. But as the interview wore on I realized that we really didn't need any more time than that, because she was telling us things we already know. She said that Liam is doing really well with his literacy and numeracy but that (surprise, surprise) he is very quiet in class. The progress report we got had about 25 skills listed, and there were four categories the checkmarks fell into. Not demonstrating, beginning to demonstrate, usually and consistently demonstrating, or something like that. He had no skills falling into 'not' and only one in 'beginning', and that one was something about forming ideas into complete sentences. I actually laughed out loud when I read that because at home, you cannot shut the boy up, he is the king of run-on sentences. But at school he will only answer a question when directly asked (and sometimes not even then), and mostly it's just 2 or 3 word answers - i.e. the bare minimum.

So in the end, it wasn't the revealing tell-all that I wanted it to be, but that's OK. If the worst of our worries is that she suspects that Liam cannot form a sentence then I can live with that. In a couple of weeks we are going back into the school to watch Liam's class perform a Christmas concert. We need to send in a Santa hat for him. You can bet I will be bringing the camera that day.

(This is Liam getting ready to wrap his gift to Mallory, a Disney princesses puzzle, because Mallory says she "needs more princess puzzles." To be honest, she is getting very good at the ones she has, which are all in the 24-piece range. Time to up the ante with this 48 piece puzzle. Liam did not show any interest in actually shopping for a gift for Mal himself; this is something we picked up for her, and as long as he gets to help wrap it and knows what's inside, he's good with calling it his gift to her. And yes, this is how he wanted to pose for this photo, eyes closed and all.)