The Artist

If you don't have young children and are not familiar with PBS Kids, let me introduce you to one of Xander's favorite things ... Word World.

It's something we know A LOT about in our house. Some might say a little too much.

Xander can recite entire episodes verbatim (and with perfect inflection). He anticipates moments in each show, laughing just before something funny is about to happen or saying a line just before a character has the chance to do so. He knows how to spell all of the words featured in the "Let's Build a Word" segments. He knows the entire series inside and out.

This summer Word World is also showing up in other ways.

Xander is our artist. He LOVES to sit down with markers or crayons or paint. He will go through an entire ream of paper in one sitting if you will let him. The desk in his room is filled with his "papers" from letters to numbers to drawings to signs to whatever his current obsession happens to be.

Here are a few recent examples ...

"Pig's Perfect Pizza" is a favorite episode.

 As is "The Lost Letter L" episode.

And, as anyone who's ever watched PBS knows, every show ends with a thank you to the sponsors as well as "Viewers Like You" and then ...

"Thank You."

Welcome to our "Word World."

A Little Bit Amazing

Seeing, a photo by here we wander on Flickr.

Every single day, I am so inspired by this kid.

Xander is so incredibly smart, and he overcomes some pretty major obstacles with speech and language and sensory issues to show us just how much he really does know. And I have a feeling we haven't seen anything yet. Not by a long shot.

First and foremost, I must tell you that many of us believe that Xander has a photographic memory. His ability to remember certain things, to recite certain things, seems to suggest it.

Today is just one of many examples. Every Monday his class gets their spelling list for the week, with five or six words that they will be tested on at the end of the week.

After a little struggle phrasing the question in a way he understood, we managed to quiz him on his words for this week. You know, the ones he just got today.

Those words were the following:

pick
let
next
jazz
when

Xander already knows a LOT of words. But these are not ones I would expect him to breeze through when he's reading. He might mumble through them, or attempt to sound them out, or he might simply look up and wait for someone to tell him the word.

When I prompted him this afternoon, he spelled every single one of them. Correctly. On the first try.

It was amazing to watch him. He would look down at his arm, tap out each letter as he was spelling, almost as though he could see the list in his mind. Which, of course, is what many of us believe he does.

So incredibly smart. And he works so incredibly hard, whether it's at school or speech therapy or even homework at home with us. Always trying, always working and always pushing forward.

Xander is absolutely amazing. And we could not be more proud of him.