David Weekly, #48

David has a paper towel tube that he calls his telescope. He loves to look through it to tell me what he sees.

He also put together something that I didn't even hear the first couple of times he said it. Tom's Diner, by Suzanne Vega, is one of my favorite songs, and I sing it to David, usually when he's not feeling well, and only because it's one of the few songs I know all the way through. But it played on a CD, and he says, "It's the song about the man!" Several things about this: I never told him what this song was about. He knew it was about a man. He decoded the song, and was able to see the character in the song.

I'm teaching David to read: we're beginning to sound out words, and I'm trying to teach him letter combinations as well, because he is more and more often spelling words, and asking me what that word says...so I taught him the word "the" and he does "read" to a degree, because the other day we were in the book store and he "read" me "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" almost word for word, really loudly, almost announcing the text. There was one part he didn't know, but he pointed exactly at the text he didn't know and asked me what it said. I told him, and he continued on. He also knows that little hearts mean "love." He sees them because it's Valentine's day, and so points them out and says, "Lwove."

David says that his mommy and sissy go to girl scouts because it's perfect for girls, and he stays with Tait. What triggered this thought? I haven't a clue. He's also begun to ask to go see his mom...We're hoping that he can go see her in mid-March, but nothing's been determined yet.

And his address! I'm teaching him his address, and he's learning. He has the number down, and he's getting better with name of the street. As the week wore on, he figured it out. I ask him what's his address, and he can say the number and street, but then I ask him, "What city?" His reply: "I don't knoooowwww" It's very cute. I told him "Tampa" and he says "That makes me a little bit mad!" I asked him about that, and didn't get much of an answer.

David had two appointments this week. First appointment was the dentist, who says that David's teeth are perfect! He did very well with getting his teeth cleaned, and got a reward, in the form of a balloon, and a bouncy ball. Second appointment was Friday morning, with the pediatrician. He brought his ball. The Dr says he's got allergies, and told me some physical things to look for, and a course of treatment, in that he's going to get zyrtec every day, and a prescription for nasonex...She also said his lungs were clear, so no asthma today. He's 41 inches tall, in the 90th percentile (!), and 38 pounds, which I'm not sure how he fits in there, in percentile terms, for weight. He's pretty much gotten over his cold, though he did have a bad, dry cough, that he had to get taken care of...poor kid.

On the language front, he's gotten casual with his speech. "David, do you want something to eat?" "Sure," he says. Not yes, or yeah, but "sure." I told him that tissues have more than one name, like, they're also called "Kleenex." So he says "My nose is bwinking. May I have a tissue-kweenex? I said it right!" That's him congratulating himself for asking the right way at the end there, since I do my best to get him to say "May I" instead of "I want" and then expecting to get something. If he says "I want" I just respond, "It's good to know what you want." If he says "May I" then I do what he's asking, for the most part, anyway. He's also getting still more fluent in what he says. He's more spontaneous in his descriptions of things, and more and more willing to describe things to me. This means that his narrative is getting better as well, in that it's more lengthy, and more descriptive. We're having conversations now, which is nice.

Lately he's decided to watch School House Rock! and is willing to really watch all of it. He especially loves "Tyranosaurus Debt", mainly because of the t-rex in the cartoon. I don't think he really has any care about what the subject is, as long as he can see the dinosaur!

Another funny thing he did was to redo the tracks for his train set, and then brings me in when he's done and says, "Ta-Da!" I like his sense of presentation.

Have a good week...

Rusty