David's Third Week

Things are going better this week for David. He's learned more
"command" words: mo'n (come on), he says "go!" when it's time for me
to go (this is usually when I'm telling him good-bye at Dot's house);
sit dair! (when he wants me to sit somewhere), or seat! Up! When
we're on our way to Dot's, or from. Up is off the road…he likes to
walk on the road when there's no cars, and as soon as he sees one he
wants to go UP! to get off the road. He actively looks for them now,
and loves it when he sees one because of the alarm that it creates.
He thinks it's great fun. He also likes to run to and from Dot's…
Today he's actually done a 'race': he puts his feet on a line in the
road as a starting line, and he does the "ready, set, go!" without
saying it exactly. And then he runs! It's very cute. He's
communicating so much more lately. More words are being said, and
they are more and more intelligible. Cars have become 'go-cars', and
just cars...
He's able to play by himself at home for longer periods, which is
good for me, as it gives me a few minutes -- enough that I am able to
give him proper energy, and I don't feel trapped by him. He loves to
'read a book'…this week we've been doing the Baby Animals picture
book, with him pointing to the animals, and me naming them. He
repeats the names of the animals, too, at least the ones he can say.
I wish I could find a book like that with the names of the animals in
French…We are also reading The Foot Book. I love it that the words
are short and repeated over and over…he's beginning to know "foot",
"feet", and "up" by sight. He's getting the book reading behaviors
down, too: left to right reading, turning the correct page…He says
"Down" but it sounds like "neer"…not sure why on that one.

A typical day begins with me getting him out of bed…sometimes he's
awake, and other times not. Either way, he wants me to turn on the
'ights' … lights with no l. So I turn on the light in his room, and
he wants to play for a few minutes, which I typically let him do.
Then we go and change his diaper (beepbeeer, he says) and put on his
clothes (cose) for the day…the other day it was actually warm enough
for shorts! We 'go for a walk' to Dot's, which he loves. I come to
get him between 5:15 and 5:45, and we walk home. He likes to get the
mail, but then he wants to throw it all away in the "Dthash" because
he can't distinguish junk mail and the stuff I need to keep, like
bills. I may have said before that I figured it's two-tenths of a
mile from my house to Dot's…so I'm walking about 1 mile every day,
and so is David. When it gets to be more light outside in the
evenings we'll go for longer walks.

When we get home, David plays, though sometimes he wants to go
through the house and turn on all the lights, or we figure out dinner…
He's decided lately that he wants Frosted Mini-Wheats for dinner…it's
a struggle because I usually want to give him more dinner type foods,
and he refuses to eat what I make…even things I know he likes, such
as tomatoes, and green beans, and fish. He asks for a "na-na" a lot,
and then over-stuffs his mouth so that he gags…I'm beginning to get
him not to over do it, and he's beginning to listen. He loves
goldfish, too. Sometimes he wants the TV on, other times he's okay
with it being off. (He lately is asking to watch the Care Bears. I
really don't know what prompted him to want to watch them, but there
it is.) It just depends. I'm okay with it either way. He's able to
give me space enough to cook dinner without a lot of interference, or
need for me to be close to him. We eat at the big, adult sized table,
though David lately likes to eat at the smaller, kid sized table,
too. Sometimes he goes between the two tables. He usually eats…it's
hard to get him to sit down and eat. He understands that "time out"
is a consequence of not following the rules, which helps in getting
him to do stuff, like sit down and eat. Any time he makes the
slightest bit of mess when he's eating, he wants to get a paper towel
to clean it up and then throw it in the dthash. He is a very messy
cereal eater, with milk going everywhere. I try to show him the
better way to hold the spoon (which he calls a book -- rhymes with
kook) but he won't have it! It will happen soon enough. He also won't
let me feed him cereal…he's independent, that one.

I give him a bath…which he likes. I figured that I just need to slow
way down on the hair washing, which is the hard part, because water
runs down no matter I do, and he doesn't like that feeling. It's hard
not to get soapy water in his eyes, too. … but he is more
cooperative; he stands up so I can scrub him down with a soapy rag…
and when he's done, he gets out, and I wrap him up with a towel, and
we play a game in the bathroom mirror where he hides behind my
shoulder and I ask, "Where's David?" and he comes out and we look in
the mirror and I say "There he is!" and we laugh. He could do this
for a while. We go in the living room and get his pajamas on, and
then back to the bathroom for brushing teeth ("eat!" he calls it, not
sure if it's toothbrush, or teeth, or something else related…) and
brushing of hair. I time all of this so that we start at 7:30 and are
done by 8. We then read a book or two, and sometimes the same book
twice, and then bed time. Lately he thinks it's funny to put his head
on the pillow and stick his butt up in the air and not lay down. Very
frustrating! It took about 3 nights for me to get him to stop doing
this…now he's back to normal cuteness of "jumping" down to a laying
position so he can go to sleep. One night I went to check on him at
about 11 PM, and I found him on the floor…I picked him up, and held
him for a while…until he did one of his very strong "points" where he
points at what he wants … so very strongly and quietly, he pointed at
the bed, and I lay him down so he could sleep.

Lastly…David's asthma has been acting up over the last few nights. He
takes his nebulizer like a champ. He coughs at night, too, and I've
discovered that if I leave the door to his room closed, he coughs. If
I leave it open, he doesn't cough. At some point I'll figure out what
is doing that…sooner than later, I hope. Then again, maybe it has to
do with the cold in general...He yells at me to put the nebulizer
back in its spot by the TV when we're done with it. "BACK! BACK!" he
says...and points.

I think about composing this letter each day as it goes...He's
changing so much, it's hard to catalog everything, and there's so
much worth reporting. Last weekend we were at the grocery store to
buy a few things, and I let him have a plum tomato...we washed it
off, and then he looked at it for a minute, and took a big chomp out
of it. And then he took another bite or two, eating about half of it.
I was very happy with this. We went to the park, and he can go on the
big slide by himself (the 'weee'). We played there for a while. He's
getting to where he can almost play with other little kids. There was
a little girl that he played in the dirt with for a bit...her parents
were pretty cool. The two kids just inhabited the same space, and
didn't interact with each other. They shared the going up the slide
ladder pretty well. But they did kind of keep the same space,
following each other a bit...it didn't last long, but still...

Amanda and I have decided to try to have a weekly phone conversation
so that David can hear Amanda's and Colleen's voices, and I'd like to
have a webcam for Amanda with sound so that he can interact with her
over the internet. I have a webcam built in to my computer...

I hope you've had a good week, and the next one is better.