David Weekly, #45

David's first word that he can read with consistency is "zoo." Whenever he sees it, he says, "z - o - o, that says zoo." I noticed this when he saw the word on a little lego man that he has. He brought it to me to tell me what he saw. Then again, when he sees STOP signs, he spells it and then tells me what it means. So it's a tie.

We went to the zoo on Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Nothing special there, really, though I let him get a plastic mold of the Florida Panther, which turned out to be the color of gum. David asked if he could eat the candy, and I said it's not candy, but a toy. He then asked if he could eat it after it turns into food...

David spilled some cereal, but left one piece on the floor, saying that the floor is still hungry. I didn't know the floor got hungry! But it does, it would seem.

When David doesn't want to do something, he says, Huh! It's really funny. His language has changed, something I remember reading about in Child Psychology when I was in college...everything in the past tense now has -ed, including words in the past test that don't merit the -ed ending, like "won" turns into "woned"

Tuesday was Inauguration Day. When I told David that we are going to watch Barak Obama on TV, David got all excited! "When someone says, 'Who's the president?' 'Barak Obama!'" This is a conversation David had with himself over and over. He kept looking at the TV and say, "Where's Barak Obama?" and then "Oh! There he is!" or "He's wearing a red tie!" I took a picture of David next to the TV w/ Obama taking the oath. David didn't understand the sense of occasion, of course, being only 3. He was running around a lot more than he usually does, so he must have felt the energy, and emotion of the moment.

Tuesday night, David had a bad, very painful cough. It took him about two hours of crying in lots of pain to finally settle down and go to sleep. He "throwed up" a couple of times, but it was all mucus. Every time he'd cough, he would cry all over again about how "it hurt me!" He was very confused about whether he should take cough medicine or not, because lately he doesn't like it, but he eventually decided to have some, and I gave him some ibuprofen as well. He also insisted on the "nebeewizer" because it makes him feel better. I couldn't find it, though! Then he told me it was in the closet, because he put it there as part of cleaning up. (I'm guessing Jesse had something to do with that! :-) And after all of this, he wanted the chest rub, too. He was having me do everything I've even done to make him feel better. Poor kid. But still smart in spite of his pain. It was a hard time getting to sleep after we got home from Dot's. But in the morning on Wednesday, he was perfectly fine. He was his normal, full of energy, self.

Wednesday, he tried to tell me the joke that heard on Word World. The joke is: How do ducks learn how to fly? A: They just wing it! I have some memory of Colleen trying to tell knock knock jokes, especially the banana, banana, banana, orange knock knock joke, which she eventually just shortened to banana, and then would laugh. She was maybe 4 and a half closer to 5 at the time. He also is telling me that his car is out of control because it ran out of gas.

Another thing about the Word World DVD: he looked on the DVD cover to see what's coming next, and he actually reads the "words" -- "Sh- Sh- Shark!" is the title of the episode, and he repeats it. I think he's reading the word rather than just looking at the picture, because he's saying the "Sh- Sh-" part, rather than just saying, "The shark one" or something like that.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning the low temperature got down to 25 degrees! Even though there was some frost, it wasn't noticeable to David, and the temperature rose so quickly during the morning that it didn't seem to be that cold.

We were playing with David's letters, and making words. Sometimes he resists making words, though other times he's willing to make different words. During all of the making of words with the letters, he sometimes puts collections of letters that, to our minds, don't go together, and assigns that "word" a meaning. So a "random" collection of letters become "shoe" or whatever he's trying to say. Also the letters don't have to have any kind of special orientation, either.

I've mentioned before how David's polite. Lately, I'm getting him to ask for things by saying "May I have" instead of "I want". So now every time he says "May I have" by himself without being prompted, he says, "I said it right!" And is all proud of himself. What a wonderful little boy he is. Sometimes if he hurts himself in a small way, he'll say, "That hurt me." I'll respond, "I'm sorry." Then he says, "You didn't do it, daddy."

Finally, this week's edition is late because his cough came back with a vengeance, and I had to really hold him and take care of him on Friday night. I put on the vaporizer to add some moisture to the room, since it's been so dry. David slept fitfully, waking up every so often because of his coughing. It was post-nasal drip that he was dealing with, so I did my best to keep him sleeping on his side, because when he would turn on his back it would start the coughing again. And he says that his nose is blinking.

While our new President offers hope for things to come, and looks at the big picture, the fact that David was running around the house and playing through this historic moment of Obama's inauguration reminds me that it's really the little, every day things that keep us going, moving and pushing forward. Keeping our promises as best we can, doing the best for each other that we can, making the best of a bad situation...these are the examples we set for our children as we go forward. Our example to them is as important as our leader's example to us.

Rusty