David Weekly, #30

David is looking out the window again, asking for his mom to come home. He's been doing that a little more lately. I told him that she's not coming home, that he'll have to go to Missouri to see her instead. He was okay with that. He'll be going up there with Matt and Virginia on September 26, and coming back on October 4th or so.

We went to the zoo twice this week. On the way there the first time, I discover that he likes classical music, calling it "slow music." He'd rather hear that than the "best of the '80s", or the "greatest hits of today"...The other time this week we went to the zoo, he was asking for the talking on the radio, since I like to listen to NPR, where the majority of the time, they talk. I'm not sure what he gets out of the talking, though the music I can understand. Whenever he talks about the elephants, he makes the elephant sound, which doesn't do well in an email, but he does it a lot. It's so funny how he says, "Hi guys!" as if he's known them forever, to total strangers. They get a kick out of it, too.

He got sick on Sunday night, and spent a good part of Monday coughing. Poor kid. He hates the nebulizer, which I try to give him when he's sick, just to make sure his lungs stay clear. So he stayed home from preschool, and was miserable. We watched ALL the PBS kids shows there were for hours, which we normally don't do. There's a ton of new shows on now, and we watched a lot of them. He got a taste of the show "Big Big World", and now wants to watch it, but it's not on except for 2PM, when I'm taking him to Dot's. By the afternoon, though, he was well enough to go to Dot's. He still has a bit of a cough, but nothing to keep him awake at night, or be a problem during the day.

David has friends at school now. Nicholas (Nichowas), and Tyler (Tywer). He goes there pretty easily now, though when I pick him up they're always eating lunch, and if he sees me, that's it. He quits eating. So I'm learning how to peak in to see if they're still eating before I get him. It helps.

David's playing with emotions now, like happy and sad. He especially likes to wake me up with a big fake smile on his face, and then he has me make faces with him, happy or sad. At about 6:50 in the morning, too, when I'm still not awake. Sometimes he will let me sleep a little more, and other times he will go in his room and play with the loud toys...

So I'm pondering as I'm at the zoo, thinking about taking things for granted. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I want to make sure I don't miss anything about David (a recurring theme here), and as he gets older, I notice that my weeklies seem to be shorter and shorter, as it appears that more things are "normal" or not so remarkable as to merit writing them down as they happen, or remembering them later. I take it as a matter of course now that I can have conversations with him, or that he can tell me things that sound funny coming of that small child like, "Awesome" or using the word "acutawwy" for emphasis.

Today (Friday) it rained, and I took him out to watch the rain...we got another cloud band from Hurricane Ike. That is a monster sized storm if it's closer to Texas than Florida, yet we're getting occasional clouds and rain here. It was quite a downpour for about 10 minutes, and since there was no lightning or thunder, we played in the rain for a while. It was a lot of fun! David had a rock that he would put in the gutter, and because of the way it was shaped, it would float downstream. He would pick it up and move it around, and watch it flow with the water. Just one more way I can see his mind developing.

And some progress on the food front: he was able to express that he was hungry this morning, and ate all of his scrambled eggs and toast that I gave him. I was very happy about this. Many times he says he wants to eat something, but after I give it to him, he won't touch it. This is frustrating sometimes! Part of the reason we went to the zoo again this week is because I told him that if he eats all of his lunch at school, that I'll take him to the zoo. Wouldn't you know he ate all of his lunch? So we went to the zoo...

Here's hoping that you get some great reward for putting in hard work, and doing the right thing.

Rusty