David Weekly, #20

This has been a pretty good week.

On Saturday, David had an unexplained fever, so I took him to After Hours Pediatrics. He had strep throat, so they gave him a scrip for amoxycillin. He's fine now. Just thought you'd like to know. I took him to his regular doctor for a followup visit, just to double check. It was a good visit because he can now tell her if something hurts, or he can cooperate a lot better, like standing on a scale. He's 34 pounds! I think he's 40 inches...the doctor liked this, too. He can tell stories, and remembers things that he can talk about later, like the zoo. He got mad at me because he remembered the zoo (he told the doctor what he saw), and wanted to go back, but I couldn't take him. I think maybe I'll buy an annual pass to the zoo so we can take trips out there every so often. He loves it!

Meanwhile, David had brought his little chairs into the kitchen. The next day, I tell him to bring them out of the kitchen. So he does, and counts them down as he takes them out: 3 more chairs! (Then he takes one out.) Two more chairs! (then he takes another one out) One more chair! (Last one goes) No more chairs! He sounds like The Count from Sesame Street. Just no silly/evil laugh at the end with thunder and lightning. :-)

On Tuesday, at the tire store (which is what I told David it was), David and I were there waiting for my car to get new tires. Amanda calls. I give David the phone so he can talk to Amanda, and I put it on speaker. He then takes the phone and begins to run around with the phone, and he's telling her things about the store: tires, cars outside, whatever he sees. As he reports this information to her, he is holding the phone out to whatever it is, as if that's how she can see it. I tell this to Amanda, and she says, "Oh, it makes more sense now!" It was so cute. By way of demonstration, take your cell phone, first hold it to your ear, then hold it out to whatever you want to describe to someone. That's what David did. It was so very cute. I also like that he took the phone and ran away from me, so he could talk to her. It's good to have a private moment with her, even if he was announcing everything he saw to her loudly enough that I could hear it at some distance. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but that's okay. He needs time with his mom, even if it is just over the phone. We haven't been doing the over-the-phone thing with the two of them as regularly as we used to. Maybe the more frequent visits are replacing some of that.

Some language notes, and a few other things:

When David wants to do something, he says, "My do it!" He's also decided that it's too hot to be outside during the day anymore, because after being outside for just a few minutes, he wanted to go back inside!

David changed from "Dance US!" to "Let's go dance" in less than a week, this week. I love watching his language change, and seeing the transformation happen right in front of me.

I asked him to go get the broom without thinking about it, and he went to go get it and brought it back. I thought after that how easy it is to take these things for granted. It's absolutely amazing that he can hear what I said, process it, follow directions, walk to get the thing I was asking for, and be able to bring it back...It's more than language: it's coordination of all the body parts, it's spacial intelligence, it's memory, it's the relationship that he and I have...And it's the idea that I didn't even realize I was asking him to do something he's now perfectly capable of doing! My only concern was that he might get distracted and forget what he was doing, or not come back because of the distraction.

He loves dancing so much I think that maybe I'll take him to the Y and see about maybe teaching him to dance? We're on a pretty good routine for eating breakfast, and lunch, and running out and doing things that need doing, like yard work, grocery shopping...so it should be not too difficult to go to a class twice a week or whatever for 3 year olds to dance.

He is less shy about speaking. He says "BYE!" really loud, and "Thank you" and "Please" with no reservation. He's also telling people he knows things that we're doing. We went to the grocery store to get a pizza and we saw our neighbor at the store, and David says, "We're getting pizza." It's not completely understandable to most, but I knew what it was. I can't think of how he mumbled it, but it was certainly meant to be a declarative statement!

I've been informed that David's 3rd birthday is the end of this month. He'll be 3 years old! It really makes me remember him coming into this world, and makes me think about how much he's changed.

I think I've really made it clear that David loves Super Why! on PBS. It keeps becoming more clear to me how much he loves it because he's now repeating some of the catch phrases from the show, like "The power to read" or "Super Readers to the rescue!"...and I'm not prepared for this when he says it, because I'm just hearing him say something that sounds familiar, but then I have decode/translate what he's saying, and Click! I get it. Wow.

Last thing: he likes to play ghost. But today, he has us run around one of the cats, who he is now calling the Ghost Cat. I don't have the slightest idea how he came up with that one, but it's pretty funny. So Kitten is the Ghost Cat, at least when we're playing. And we play a lot!

It's fully summer time now, so I hope you are taking some time to play. It does refresh your soul.