Jonah

      Hi!  This is Mary!  So far, Tyler has done anything and everything with the blog, but I had a little bit of time this evening, so I thought I would put my two cents in:)!  I pondered for a little bit what or whom my first post would be about, and finally decided on writing about a little guy that I have come to love very much.  Let me tell you a little about him.  His name is Jonah, and he is in Mrs. Brock's class, in which I spend a lot of time helping.  Jonah is 11 years old and is in third grade.  He is not like any other little boy, though, because he has Down Syndrome.  It is that fact that endears him to me.  He is the sweetest, funniest little guy, and he keeps me laughing.  He is VERY smart, and that is part of what makes him so funny.  He amazes me with all that he can do, even with Down Syndrome.  When I say he is in third grade, I mean that he can do basically what any other third grader can do.  He can do "take aways" (subtraction), addition of two numbers that each have two digits, he has gotten through all of his cursive letters in English, he studies and does well on his Science and Social Studies tests, and got a 100% on his last Word Building test, which involved 40 spelling words.  When I say spelling words, I mean words of up to 7 letters!!  Yesterday I was practicing spelling words with him and called out the word "help".  He wrote it on the board and then looked at me and added "ful" at the end.  He proceeded to tell me that I could expand the word "help" into an even larger word (helpful) if I wanted to (thank you, Jonah:)!
      I look forward to his greetings every morning.  Most of what he does is with a burst of energy, unless he is upset or sick.  He will come running in the door with a bang that makes me turn around from whatever I am doing in my office.  As soon as he sees me he will shout out, "HI MAWWY!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  He then proceeds to run over and gives me a hug that sometimes squeezes my neck so hard that I think he is going to choke me.           The first time I realized how smart he was was pretty soon after I had started working at the school.  I was at his desk studying his spelling with him. I was holding his PACE and told him to spell the word "basket".  He got a little, sly smile on his face and started giggling and pointing at the back of the PACE I was holding.  I turned it over and saw that in the middle of the page full of sentences one sentence had the word "basket", and he could see it.  He thought it was the funniest things and just could not stop laughing at "Mawwy".
      Last week during music class, which Tyler and I teach, I told the kids to turn to a certain song in the book.  One of the girls in the class went to help Jonah and he snatched his book away from her and said, "No! Mawwy hop(help) me!!"  He came running up to me, only wanting me to help him.  It seems to be that he always wants me to "hop" him.  As soon as I walk into the classroom he will put his question flag up and without permission to talk will look at me and say "Hop!! Mawwy!!"  Mrs. Brock and I have figured out that he acts like he needs help most of the time because he just wants me to be with him:)!  I found out recently that he has a sister named Mary whom he loved dearly because she helped him a lot, but she had to go off to college.  I think that is why he likes me.  He often will point at a picture of her that is in his classroom, point at me, say "Mawwy", and then point at her and say "Mawwy".
        One day I was at lunch and I started to tease Jonah a little to make him laugh.  Then I started singing the "Patch the Pirate" song about Jonah.  He was laughing and laughing.  At the end, I started to walk away and as I turned around to say goodbye, he shouted out "I lub you, Mawwy!!!" and then blew me three kisses.  A few days after, though, he was very upset with me because I got on to him about coloring instead of working.  He looked at me with a very sullen face, crossed his arms, and firmly shook his head when I told him to work on math.  I ignored him for a little bit, and then went back and started to "hop" him and showed him that he was really very smart and could do the work all alone.  After he had finished I let him go back to coloring for doing a good job.  So what did he color?  A picture for me--there was blue sky above, green grass below, a BIG yellow person and a little yellow person.  The big person had the name "Mary" written above it, and the little person, of course, had the name "Jonah" written on it.  He was so proud when he presented it to me:)!
      I have many more "Jonah" stories I could tell, but I will save them for another day.  I am so glad to be able to work with him.  I think I have learned more while helping him than he has learned from me.  He is a reminder to me that every person is precious in the Lord's eyes.