I just have to say, with my naked eye I see dark blue and lighter blue. My husband sees all the colors and points where I should take pictures. He says he sees greens and pinks, but without my camera I totally don’t!

Total support for public schools, BTW. This is me expressing empathy for teachers dealing with so many more than two.

But I think the real take-away from my experience is the "we tried a bunch of different methods before we found one that just clicked." Because that's the part that public schools just can't do. My experience is based on just two kids, but I definitely found that one size did not fit all.

I don't think that moment helped me figure out a better way to teach him on its own (we tried a bunch of different methods before we found one that just clicked), but it did give me heaps more empathy for what he was going through. Which is a good thing if you're trying to teach, IMO.

I had been working at it for a while before I realized that I was doing the exact same thing that my younger son was doing, namely grabbing the first letter and the last letter and guessing at the middle. It was an epiphany, that moment. It was so frustrating when he did it, but I was doing it too!

Now by a complete coincidence, I was learning to read Urdu at the same time as the younger was learning to read English. Seriously, my obsession with Bollywood films had led me to learn Hindi, which is so close to Urdu, I just thought I'd pick it up at the same time. But the writing is so different.

You see, he had learned a bunch of words by sight, because of hanging around his brother (who is 3.5 years older). This was also true with some math skills, but with reading it made for a real problem. Because he wanted to just see things and know them without the work of "sounding it out."

I realize my personal Venn diagram of interests that overlap polar exploration, airships in general, and any kind of terrier dog is pretty niche. But this movie (animated with interspersed archival footage), really hit the mark for me. And how cute was Titina in real life?

I gave the Norwegian a go first because I understand that spoken better than French, but in the end went with the French because while I frequently don't know what I'm hearing exactly, my reading skills are much sharper. Plus, I knew the history this movie was based on well enough I could follow it.

As far as I know, it's not streaming anywhere. I tracked down a DVD that I could play on my gaming computer, the one with the DVD set to the region code for Japanese movies. And the only audio and subtitle options were Norwegian and French. Both of which I've Duolingo-ed, right?

Which is obviously *way* on the nose, but I was bugging my son about what happened with Harvard Willoughby the sheep after I finally unlocked him in Baldur’s Gate 3.

I swear.

I am, of course, pleased to know that it's already mind-blowing, so emotionally affecting, blah blah blah. Really takes the edge off actually getting the words out.