Shane II

I forgot to mention in my previous post some very important declarations made by young Mr. Benedict.
Just in case you are reading this and don't have previous knowledge of Jeremy's unwavering devotion to Penn State, I will say it has deep roots. So what I am about to write was a very BIG deal within our household. At the supper table one evening a couple weeks ago I told Shane that if he could get good enough at wrestling and if he continued doing it through high school he could get a scholarship to college. Then Jeremy chimed in with how good PSU's wrestling program is. At this point Shane interrupts to ask just where Penn State is. Well Pennsylvania of course. Shane gave Jeremy a sort of confused look and said " Well I'm not going to Penn State then. I'm going to Ohio State duhh!"
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"GASP"
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CHOKE
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SWALLOW
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SPUTTER
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"BUT"
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"BUT!!"
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"WHAAAAAT!!!!!!!"
and the shock set in. Oh where, oh where did he go wrong. Actually These are just Jeremy's reactions. I on the other hand had the best abs work out of the year due to the laughter. Honestly though I never coached Shane on this. Since this momentous event the shock has worn off and reality has started to set in. Jeremy has even conceded that if Shane actually got so good the he was offered a scholarship to OSU that he would put on the scarlet and gray and cheer his loudest at all the meets. Except when Shane would be wrestling the PSU kid then he's just not sure!!

I also wanted to link a few of Shane's wrestling match videos here so...

against Covington

against Bath

round 1 against Aaron Wallers

round 2 against A.W.

and round 3 against A.W.

Shane/Bub

Shane Markley (my maiden name) Benedict. 8 weeks before Shane was born Jeremy and I came to the conclusion that the name we had picked out for our son, Kane, had to go. We both liked it and felt confident the the stigma behind the name Cain did and would not affect us, but what about the little boy? Would he grow up resenting the fact that we didn't consider his feelings about the matter? Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but I'm still not sure how he would have felt about it. He's sort of like a crusty little crab, hard on the outside but soft on the inside.

Last night when Shane went to put his dirty clothes in the hamper he discovered that he actually had to reach the put his things on the top of the pile/mountain of dirty clothes. He then collapsed in a fit of giggles declaring loudly that "Mom REALLY needs to do the laundry!" The good part about it was he was more than willing to add Jo's dirty clothes to the very tip top when I was getting her pj's on her. He wanted to see just how tall he could make that mountain of laundry that Mom so needed to wash. I'm happy to report that although I probably won't be finishing it today the laundry is sorted and the washer and dryer are humming cozily. I'm so glad for a warm house and modern commodities like washers and dryers on days like today!

This year Shane is in the First grade. His teacher is Ms. Green and she is an excellent teacher. Shane's math skills are amazing, but he is still struggling to understand the concept of reading. He seems to be able to memorize really well and does good with his sight words, but struggles a lot when it comes time to sound words out. My challenge is to get him interested in the books he is trying to read. Since he is a science and biology geek it's not that difficult. He loves all kind of informational books the hard part is fining them with words simple enough for him to read. The funny part is when we get to some scientific word that I don't even know and we both sit there trying to sound it out. I'm still not sure we figured out the true name of that one kind of frog the other day. Oh well it was fun to say it all the different ways it might be and good for him to try.

Shane has two hobbies this year. I had originally told the children they could pick out one each, but both of Shane's hobbies were inexpensive. He joined the Cub Scouts about a year ago and really loves all the outdoorsy stuff. This past November he also signed up for wrestling and he's been doing really well. This coming Sunday is the tournament and then after that we'll go to the Nutter Center for his final meet if he does good enough this Sunday. So far this year he's gotten 6 pins.

Just this past Christmas, when we were in Kansas, Shane spent a day with his Uncle Kent reading water meters. That evening at the supper table he wondered if he was related to Kent. Upon confirming that he was indeed related he replied "Sweet!" Immediately a red flag went up and I had to inquire as to just what those two had been up to that day. Besides Kent trying to teach Shane how to gleek, if you don't know what that means consider yourself lucky, I'm not sure what all they did. Shane did get paid a very large sum of moolah for his wonderful companionship that day though. He is squirreling it away and intends to amass a much bigger stock pile. I'm rather pleased to find out that he has a desire to save his money as in the past he can't wait to spend it.

He may be the only boy in our family (actually can you every really say a man is not a boy any more? which would mean there are actually two boys in our family), but he definitely holds his own in a house full of females. ...Note I'm not commenting on the maturity of the parental female of our household...

Lexi

"Alexia Thu Thuy Benedict!" Shane uses every one of her four names when he discovers her destroying or just plain wrecking one of his creations, which she just can't resist whether they be masterpieces made of Lego or tinker toys, architectural structures for his train or cars, carving out of wood, or one of his many collections. She now has an accomplice in crime, her side-kick, stinker winker bean, better known as Joey. Upon discovery of her wreckage she has newly elected to attempt to divert all blame to said side-kick by emphatically stating "Jo Jo JO JO JO!!!" It's not working out so well for her seeing as we're on to her little scheme. For example yesterday I discovered Lexi's artwork on our white cupboard. Due to the fact that it was colorfully displayed in purple marker and there was the same shade of purple marker marks on her hands I was pretty confident I had discovered the true culprit. Besides that the scribbling were just too advanced to be the scribblings of a one year old. Actually if it had been Jo I'm pretty sure the purple markings would have been primarily around Jo's mouth as she's more apt to chew on the marker than use it to create artwork.

Now how about a list of some of Lexi's favorite things: school, Daddy, outside, food, massive piles of hoarded toys, and wrestling with the entire family(excluding Mom of course). I just don't find much pleasure in being attacked by four jumping squealing, elbowing, kneeing rowdy kids! Jeremy seems to find it rather amusing though. I do find it amusing as well, but only from the sidelines thank-you very much.

Lexi has been home for two and a half years now. She is in school primarily for speech therapy and the last PT conference I went to the therapist was very encouraged by Lexi's progress. She does seem to have a lot of new words since she started school this past fall, but I have yet to hear her put two together. Her two newest words are "me and mine". Have you ever heard of a child who waited until they were 3 and a half years old to implement these two words into their vocabulary!?