David Weekly, #38

It's been a good week. I got home on Saturday after work to a house full of children: Jesse ended up with her two nephews and the little girl she always babysits, plus David. When I got home, she was ready for nap! David is definitely learning how to play well with others, but hasn't mastered it yet, since he was having a terrible time sharing, and wanting to play with everything everyone else had, no matter what it was, or how long ago he'd played with it. I made a kids' dinner: baked beans, corn, and the little Hillshire Farms sausages. Everyone ate pretty well, except Jesse and I...so when it was time for Jesse and company to leave, I ended up going with them next door, and Anna fed us again. David was so funny, though, since at the end of the night when it was time to leave, the two nephews were getting in the tub for a bath, and he was begging me to get in there with them! But instead, we went home, read a book, went to sleep.

Sunday we went to see my father, but David fell asleep in the car on the way over there. Poor kid. He wasn't his usual gregarious self, and my dad was busy anyway, so we didn't stay long. It was funny, though, when I was telling David we were going to go...I said, "We're going to see my father today." And he furrows his brow, and says to me, "And when we're done seeing your father, can we go see my father?" I laughed and said that I am his father (which automatically put into my head, "Luke. I . am your father!")...too funny. So he doesn't know the word father. Well, he does now.

And he's peeing in the potty! I'm very happy about that. My head is bruised a bit, because he literally likes to butt heads with me. Ugh. But it keeps him on the pot until he's done something. I'm over the crying and the tears and the playing. He did not like naked time, he told me. He'd rather have on his diaper. Well, I said, you're not getting your diaper until you pee in the potty! Yes, it's paradoxical, I know. But it did have its intended impact. Later in the week we're getting a routine. And he's less fussy about the whole thing. He still resists until I tell him he'll sit there until he goes, so almost immediately, something happens. He's learning!

David had his first "incident" at his preschool this week. I got there at the usual time, around noon, and he came in from being outside with his class crying! And his face was dirty. So I see him and pick him up, and he says that Brandon pushed him...of course, I have to wonder if this was something that he got as retaliation, or if it's something that happened out of the blue. David told me the story a number of times, but I wasn't quite able to make sense of it. We got home and he was still upset, so I got a cool, wet rag for his face, washed him off, sat with him for a while, made him feel better.

David has officially discovered sticks. And rocks. I know I talked about this last week, but it's worth mentioning again. He collects sticks he finds, plays with them (sometimes with an emphatic HIYA! à la Japenese karate flicks), or just carries them around as he's doing other things...Or he carries rocks. I have some smooth garden stones (I'm sure these have a name, but I don't know it :-) and he finds one to hold, carry around, what have you. He discovered that holding a stone can keep his hand warm, because the stone holds heat. He rather liked that.

On the language learning front, David did something new: he asked me how to say something in French! He said he was tired, and then asked me how to say that in French, with his eyebrows doing their little furrow thing. I told him, and then he began asking me a bunch of other "how do you say" questions. I feel like he is picking it up. I also realized that I tell him I love him, but never say it in French. Part of language is communication, so I'm having to learn how to communicate in French, which I've only really had to do twice: once when I was actually in France, and when Amanda and I would speak in French to keep Colleen from understanding what we were saying. It's so much more immediate feeling, though, but I have to remind myself that he only knows English because that's how I communicate with him. He'll learn French if I use that to communicate with him. At one point, I said something he didn't understand in French, so he said, "Show me."

Another new thing: He ran away from me, went into colleen's room and closed the door. And thought that was the funniest thing! He says things are funny, and he's putting value judgements on things, like flowers. He got me the purple/pinkish flowers from my periwinkles, just two of them, saying how pretty they are. Then he brings me a white flower from the periwinkles, but this is not as pretty, he says.

And finally, we went to go see the Space Shuttle launch today. It was a long, slow drive over there, since there was so much traffic. David kept asking to go faster! It's the last night time launch of the shuttle, as the fleet will be retired in 2010. It takes about 2 and half hours to get out there from here. He fell asleep on the way over, and when we got to the Cape (Cape Canavarel not simply "Cape"), we went to a park that sat on the water, which gave a perfect view of the whole thing. David is such a trooper. I told him we're going to go see a rocket ship go into space, and he wanted to go! He sat quietly in the back seat, or he talked to me about what we were going to see...When we finally got there, he got out of the car with me...we ended up on US 1, just west and south of the Kennedy Space Center, where there was a park (and lots of people) on the water, which gave a great view of the shuttle as it was lifting off. Of course, at the park was a play set, so we played while waiting for the shuttle to do its thing. When it was all over (about 10 minutes later), David was like, "Let's go home." And he sat quietly in the back for the two hours it took to get home...but a good portion of that was sleeping.

The astronauts will be in space for 16 days, enlarging the International Space Station, and helping to trade out crew. With this in mind, let's hope that the spirit of cooperation and of dreams had and achieved permeates us and our future.