busy week

Somehow it has escaped my notice until now that Nick, who is seven, is becoming a different person, right before my very eyes. Last week he learned to ride his bike. Really ride it, without training wheels and all. He couldn't, and then, the next day, he could.

He's taken a few big spills, too. Big scrape on the elbow, and, scariest of all, he looks like he got almost garrotted by a chain he rode into instead of under. But --though he's normally a pretty big whiner about stuff like this-- he's stoic.

Actually last week I brought him his skateboard to school on afternoon so he could ride it home, and he took a pretty big spill on the way. He got up and brushed himself off, and I said, "you ok? That was a pretty big spill." He said, "I'm ok. If you want to ride a skateboard, you have to be willing to fall sometimes."

Well, OK, then.

Last week he also decided he loved the Harry Potter books. I began reading him the first one on Thursday night. We finished chapter one together, as we had done almost a year ago before he decided that it might be too scary and we should stop. This time, he took the book and read it by flashlight for a while that night, then simply lived inside the book until, Saturday, he finished it. He's now finished the second one, and can't be torn from the third.

So he's a reading, biking, kind of a guy.

The sad thing about the reading (I know, there's not supposed to be a sad thing about the reading) is that he really won't let me read to him right now. He's just too determined to get through these books on his own. And that's fine, but I wasn't really ready to let go of the bed-time reading. Maybe we could just start--oh, I don't know-- The Hobbit?