This year JJ’s reading has gone from strength to strength. At the beginning of the year his reading pretty much consisted of picture books with basic words but now it’s the other way round.

He’s also much better at giving words a try than he used to be. He used to see a word that he didn’t know and be too scared he’d get it wrong to even give it a go. With much persistence on my part I’ve managed to get him to at least try the word now and more often than not he either gets it right or he’s very close. I remember when I was a kid that I never used to say magician properly. It was always magican in my head.

For his birthday in June a friend got him a couple of books, one of which is Just Disgusting by Andy Griffiths. Last night when I said I’d read him something before he went to bed this is the book he chose but then he read to me. He started reading the story about brussel sprouts, about how disgusting they are.

I have to agree with that. I bought some brussel sprouts a month or two ago when they were in season thinking that maybe I’d grown out of my hatred for them but even though I didn’t overcook them, I still didn’t like the flavour. JJ wasn’t into them either so we won’t bother buying them again.

After getting through most of the Andy Griffiths story about how he tries to offload his five brussel sprouts so he can get dessert, I don’t think JJ will eat them any time soon either.