she's doing it

So you may recall earlier in the school year Abby was invited to be part of an intense reading program. She finished last year about a year behind the rest of her class in reading despite spending time in resource and having an IEP. It was not easy going in the beginning. This program has Abby spending four hours a week out of her class. There were tears and moaning and complaining. She was missing gym. She was missing library. She was missing her friends. She was different than everybody else. She disliked the program very much.

Fast forward to this week... Abby brought home a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book from the library for Christmas break. She was sitting beside me on the couch with the book in her lap. She often sits with a chapter book and it looks like she's reading it, but when you would ask her about the story she'd tell you she couldn't remember what it was. So as she sat there the other day I asked her... what is the book about?

And she said.... let me tell you! And she flipped to the first page and read the first paragraph and then she rambled on about the other characters and what they had said and done that was funny pausing here and there to read a sentence or two to me. I had a lump in my throat the size of a boulder. She was reading!

In the past couple of days Mike and I have noticed that she's reading everything she can. Words on TV, street signs, cereal boxes, my texts and emails over my shoulder. It's just so exciting! For her and for us.