Monday, March 30, 2009
Doctor Visit
Poor David. He was asking me about going to the doctor, were they going to clean his teeth. And I said no, this is the doctor for your allergies. He was in a good mood, things were happy...and then the scratch test begins: the nurse writes on his arm 21 marks. Then he puts 21 little drops of different reagents on his arm next to the numbers...then he gets 21 little pin pricks, that each bleed. Now, he has to have his arm still for 15 minutes. He was very unhappy with this arrangement. He cried and screamed for a while. The reason we did it on his arm is because he didn't want to have it done on his back, because he didn't like having his shirt off in the doctor's office. And then he had to have 4 more under the skin needle pricks for other allergens...but that wasn't so bad. The doctor tells me that he's basically allergic to the outside world: trees, grass, but not cats! He also gave me medicines to try: 2 days for each one unless there's a side effect. Then throw it out. The doctor was great, by the way. I had no idea it would be so traumatic. Ugh.
Friday, March 27, 2009
David Weekly, #54
David is gettting self-sufficient. In the morning he goes potty all by himself, turns on the TV...but doesn't get any food for himself yet. He says, "Good Morning" to me now, instead of "Are you wake?" Or "It's light outside!"
Meanwhile, his imagination is getting better. Two "stories": he has lost some letters from a board thing with wooden letters, and he's saying someone took them when he was asleep. I wonder who...And David was threatening me the other day w/ taking my driver license away from me if I didn't go left at an intersection. I wonder where he gets this stuff!
S and H start w/ shoe...This is how he identifies letters now and the words they go with, but he's saying it backwards. We all know what he means, but it's still cute him saying it this way. And speaking of letters, he can almost write his name! He's been playing with writing letters for a while now, but he was actually able to get them all on one sheet of paper, though not quite in order, but he got them all there. Another thing that I thought was funny is when I asked him what letters are in his name he began to finger spell his name. I like how that's automatic.
A big thing for David this week. Over the past few weeks he's been putting up a big fuss about going to Dot's. I understand how he doesn't want to go there after being home for a part of the day, and then not wanting to leave home. But his protests have ben especially strong. So I asked him why he's so upset, and it's because Dot yells, he says. I told him I'd talk to her about it. Except I didn't have to. On Thursday, we walked into Dot's, and did our normal routine: I put him in the toddler bed so he can take a nap. I go sign the book, and he follows me, and we kiss and hug good bye. Then we go to the door, and do this all over again. But this time, he says to me, "One more fing." And he takes me by the hand, goes up to Dot, and says, "Don't yell at me anymore." She was so surprised that I don't think she heard him. So he said it again. She was very surprised, and said, "Oh, I don't yell. Maybe my voice is very strong. But I'll take care not to be so loud." And that was it. I just confirmed that his primary objection to going there is her yelling. We'll see in the next week or two if anything is different. It may be time to switch daycares.
This week, and the last two weeks, David has been all over the state: Two weeks ago he saw the Space Shuttle lift off from Cape Canaveral. Last week we went to my friend's house up near Ocala in a very rural area for her birthday. Then we went to Orlando to visit another friend of mine who is down here to go to Disney World. And today we went to Ft Myers for the birthday of another friend's son. In each case, he played pretty well with the kids that were there. David's a really good traveller. He always has something to say when we're going along, and depending on the time of day, he sleeps in the car seat.
So it's been a very good, active week for the boy. Hope your week is active, too.
Rusty
Meanwhile, his imagination is getting better. Two "stories": he has lost some letters from a board thing with wooden letters, and he's saying someone took them when he was asleep. I wonder who...And David was threatening me the other day w/ taking my driver license away from me if I didn't go left at an intersection. I wonder where he gets this stuff!
S and H start w/ shoe...This is how he identifies letters now and the words they go with, but he's saying it backwards. We all know what he means, but it's still cute him saying it this way. And speaking of letters, he can almost write his name! He's been playing with writing letters for a while now, but he was actually able to get them all on one sheet of paper, though not quite in order, but he got them all there. Another thing that I thought was funny is when I asked him what letters are in his name he began to finger spell his name. I like how that's automatic.
A big thing for David this week. Over the past few weeks he's been putting up a big fuss about going to Dot's. I understand how he doesn't want to go there after being home for a part of the day, and then not wanting to leave home. But his protests have ben especially strong. So I asked him why he's so upset, and it's because Dot yells, he says. I told him I'd talk to her about it. Except I didn't have to. On Thursday, we walked into Dot's, and did our normal routine: I put him in the toddler bed so he can take a nap. I go sign the book, and he follows me, and we kiss and hug good bye. Then we go to the door, and do this all over again. But this time, he says to me, "One more fing." And he takes me by the hand, goes up to Dot, and says, "Don't yell at me anymore." She was so surprised that I don't think she heard him. So he said it again. She was very surprised, and said, "Oh, I don't yell. Maybe my voice is very strong. But I'll take care not to be so loud." And that was it. I just confirmed that his primary objection to going there is her yelling. We'll see in the next week or two if anything is different. It may be time to switch daycares.
This week, and the last two weeks, David has been all over the state: Two weeks ago he saw the Space Shuttle lift off from Cape Canaveral. Last week we went to my friend's house up near Ocala in a very rural area for her birthday. Then we went to Orlando to visit another friend of mine who is down here to go to Disney World. And today we went to Ft Myers for the birthday of another friend's son. In each case, he played pretty well with the kids that were there. David's a really good traveller. He always has something to say when we're going along, and depending on the time of day, he sleeps in the car seat.
So it's been a very good, active week for the boy. Hope your week is active, too.
Rusty
Friday, March 20, 2009
David Weekly, #53
Went to the park on Friday, and there was a family that had special balloons and a pump that you use to fill the balloons, and they fly up in the air. David had a blast. The family was very accepting of him, too. He just fit right in. He's very good at not being afraid to approach people that are doing something that he's interested in. And he makes friends very easily. Another example of this is the little boy we see at the park. This other little boy just turned 3, according to his parents. David played with the other little boy, basically by ordering him around. He'd throw the frisbee, and then either chase it, or tell this other kid to "Go get it!" One day we were going to the park, and he asked if the boy with the "sipey hair" was going to be there. I didn't know this word, but I figured that it might be "spikey." I offered this option to David and he said no, "Sipey!" (long I, long E) Sure enough, the kid was there, and they played.
On Sunday we took another trip to Cape Canaveral, to see the Space Shuttle launch. He had a great time! We took his cousins Avery and Jared along, and everyone had a good time. David even took some pictures of the launch as it was happening. He said the shuttle was all covered in fire, and then it turned into clouds!
There's really not a lot to report this week. We go to the park every day now, just about. I ask him what he had for lunch, but the only thing he ever says is "peaches." I wish I could figure out if this means that he only ate the peaches, or that's all that's worth mentioning, or he doesn't know what he ate...
David has an appointment with an allergist on March 30, at 10:30 AM. Hopefully that will give us some insight into his asthma attacks every Spring.
I remember some weeks back I had talked about themes, but I'm finding that that isn't very workable, at least not yet. What I do know is that I'm usually pretty good at finding things to say about him anyway. Except today, when I'm drawing a blank. I'm beginning to make David clean up his mess, which at this point is toys thrown all around everywhere. And he fights me. But he is a bit malleable, which helps. Time out, then come back and do some stuff...that usually works.
So other than that, David's week is pretty routine. I think maybe I'll try to start paying attention to him in some other ways than I have been, to make sure I get it all.
Have a good week.
Rusty
On Sunday we took another trip to Cape Canaveral, to see the Space Shuttle launch. He had a great time! We took his cousins Avery and Jared along, and everyone had a good time. David even took some pictures of the launch as it was happening. He said the shuttle was all covered in fire, and then it turned into clouds!
There's really not a lot to report this week. We go to the park every day now, just about. I ask him what he had for lunch, but the only thing he ever says is "peaches." I wish I could figure out if this means that he only ate the peaches, or that's all that's worth mentioning, or he doesn't know what he ate...
David has an appointment with an allergist on March 30, at 10:30 AM. Hopefully that will give us some insight into his asthma attacks every Spring.
I remember some weeks back I had talked about themes, but I'm finding that that isn't very workable, at least not yet. What I do know is that I'm usually pretty good at finding things to say about him anyway. Except today, when I'm drawing a blank. I'm beginning to make David clean up his mess, which at this point is toys thrown all around everywhere. And he fights me. But he is a bit malleable, which helps. Time out, then come back and do some stuff...that usually works.
So other than that, David's week is pretty routine. I think maybe I'll try to start paying attention to him in some other ways than I have been, to make sure I get it all.
Have a good week.
Rusty
Friday, March 13, 2009
David Weekly, #52
David had a busy weekend: Friday we went to two different parks, and out to lunch with my friend James. Saturday, he went a children's festival with Jesse at USF, and then after I got home from work we went to the Gasparilla Arts Festival in downtown Tampa for a couple of hours. He is a challenge now because he wants to run away, or hide in different places, and thinks it's all so funny. This is part of why I've been teaching him his address, and making sure he knows his first and last name, and a few other details. Maybe I should get some stickers printed that I can just stick on him with my info, just in case he gets lost. I do my best to keep up with him, but I don't have a very good way of making him take this running away thing seriously, because even holding him and not letting him go has no effect really, and neither does time out. I'd like to hear from you about a good way to deal with this issue. Another thing I've started to do is to introduce him to any police I see around, so he knows what to look for in case he's ever in any kind of trouble. We're going out and doing more things lately, so this is important for him, I think. At the arts festival, he wasn't very interested in the art. It was his first time at something like that, so it's understandable. I just wanted to show him all the different things out there. He did like one or two things, I think, but not for any longer than a couple of seconds. He was mostly interested in the interior spaces for their own sakes, and for the possibility of an opening in the back, or other pathways in/out/around the little tents. He was so tired at the end of the day that he fell asleep on the couch at 7:30!
Sunday we went to the Celtic Festival in Zephyrhills. He wasn't very interested in doing a whole lot there, as it's not quite geared towards children his age. They did have a dog show, which he sat for pretty well. And he pet some dogs as they were in various places. He knows that you need tickets for the kid-oriented slide and bouncy thing. Mostly, he wanted to play at the park, where there was playground equipment. At the park, with lots of other kids around, David has a peculiar behavior: he hits other kids on the play ground as he is going by, even though they didn't do anything to him. I asked him why he does this, and he says because it makes him feel better and to tell the other kids that are older/bigger than him that he's the bigger one. I'm not sure if that's dominance he's trying to display, or a way to pretend he's as big or as good as the other kids...At one point he actually started a fight with another kid on the play ground and pushed that poor child down. He got an immediate time out for that, of course, and put on a big show of crying as he sat out for a few minutes, but he went right away back to that subtle hitting other kids as he would run by them. I asked David if there's some other way for him to feel "more equal" to the other kids, and he didn't know. So I've got to think about that. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.
David has two cars, and they're both black, but one of them lost its rear axle. He asked me to say which was broken, while holding the broken one out to me, and holding the non-broken one back. So the kid was "stacking the deck" as it were...
And speaking of cars, he's my official back seat driver. Remember when I said he's my personal trainer? Well now, he sees the green light, and he says, "GO! GO! GO!" or the red light, "STOP STOP STOP!" And he asks me why I stop at stop signs, even though he knows. And he's always asking me which way to turn, "that way, or that way?" I say, "Left or right?" Sometimes he says it. To him, going one way down the street is always to the park. He's
David is now beginning to write letters. All on his own. It must be the school...and I allowed him to make a choice: keep writing/drawing, or go to the park? He kept putting off the park in favor of the writing/drawing. So when I told him he had to go to Dot's and not to the park, he got upset! I had properly warned him he would lose the park if he wanted to continue, and he was okay w/ not going to the park, until he realized he wasn't going to go. It had just gotten too late. It's becoming an almost daily activity to go the park. He loves to interact with the kids that he meets there. Today he actually cheered when he saw other kids at the park. We had gone to the park earlier and no one was there, so he was disappointed.
And he can write! He's been writing the letter H all over paper after paper. I'm going to run out of printer paper soon. Anyone care to send me a ream or two? He's been using an orange hi-ligher to do most of the work, rather than crayons, though he will sit at the table and draw lines and fill in spaces on the paper with that marker. And he absolutely loves to do it. The letters, holding the pen, pencil, crayons, markers the right way...he'll get there fast! He writes the letters from the bottom to the top. A guy I work with told me his son was taught to write his letters from the bottom up, rather than the other way around. Reason: because of the transition to cursive. In cursive, you start from the bottom, too.
A couple of language notes: David has discovered "Nanna's Cottage" on DVD that we have. (And by the way, he doesn't like TV for some reason.) The characters on the show have a Maine/Canada accent to them, and now David says, "Nanna's Cottage" with "Nanna's" accent. I can't reproduce here how it sounds, but it is a distinct accent, and David does it perfectly. The other thing is that it seems that the last one or two things he needs to get figured out is how to say the sounds in the middle of words. Words like "letter" come out le-er, for example.
That's about it for this week. Hope you have a good one.
Rusty
Sunday we went to the Celtic Festival in Zephyrhills. He wasn't very interested in doing a whole lot there, as it's not quite geared towards children his age. They did have a dog show, which he sat for pretty well. And he pet some dogs as they were in various places. He knows that you need tickets for the kid-oriented slide and bouncy thing. Mostly, he wanted to play at the park, where there was playground equipment. At the park, with lots of other kids around, David has a peculiar behavior: he hits other kids on the play ground as he is going by, even though they didn't do anything to him. I asked him why he does this, and he says because it makes him feel better and to tell the other kids that are older/bigger than him that he's the bigger one. I'm not sure if that's dominance he's trying to display, or a way to pretend he's as big or as good as the other kids...At one point he actually started a fight with another kid on the play ground and pushed that poor child down. He got an immediate time out for that, of course, and put on a big show of crying as he sat out for a few minutes, but he went right away back to that subtle hitting other kids as he would run by them. I asked David if there's some other way for him to feel "more equal" to the other kids, and he didn't know. So I've got to think about that. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.
David has two cars, and they're both black, but one of them lost its rear axle. He asked me to say which was broken, while holding the broken one out to me, and holding the non-broken one back. So the kid was "stacking the deck" as it were...
And speaking of cars, he's my official back seat driver. Remember when I said he's my personal trainer? Well now, he sees the green light, and he says, "GO! GO! GO!" or the red light, "STOP STOP STOP!" And he asks me why I stop at stop signs, even though he knows. And he's always asking me which way to turn, "that way, or that way?" I say, "Left or right?" Sometimes he says it. To him, going one way down the street is always to the park. He's
David is now beginning to write letters. All on his own. It must be the school...and I allowed him to make a choice: keep writing/drawing, or go to the park? He kept putting off the park in favor of the writing/drawing. So when I told him he had to go to Dot's and not to the park, he got upset! I had properly warned him he would lose the park if he wanted to continue, and he was okay w/ not going to the park, until he realized he wasn't going to go. It had just gotten too late. It's becoming an almost daily activity to go the park. He loves to interact with the kids that he meets there. Today he actually cheered when he saw other kids at the park. We had gone to the park earlier and no one was there, so he was disappointed.
And he can write! He's been writing the letter H all over paper after paper. I'm going to run out of printer paper soon. Anyone care to send me a ream or two? He's been using an orange hi-ligher to do most of the work, rather than crayons, though he will sit at the table and draw lines and fill in spaces on the paper with that marker. And he absolutely loves to do it. The letters, holding the pen, pencil, crayons, markers the right way...he'll get there fast! He writes the letters from the bottom to the top. A guy I work with told me his son was taught to write his letters from the bottom up, rather than the other way around. Reason: because of the transition to cursive. In cursive, you start from the bottom, too.
A couple of language notes: David has discovered "Nanna's Cottage" on DVD that we have. (And by the way, he doesn't like TV for some reason.) The characters on the show have a Maine/Canada accent to them, and now David says, "Nanna's Cottage" with "Nanna's" accent. I can't reproduce here how it sounds, but it is a distinct accent, and David does it perfectly. The other thing is that it seems that the last one or two things he needs to get figured out is how to say the sounds in the middle of words. Words like "letter" come out le-er, for example.
That's about it for this week. Hope you have a good one.
Rusty
Friday, March 6, 2009
David Weekly, #51
So this has been a busy week, again...David went to urgent care on Saturday, because his heart was "racing," and his coughing didn't stop, even after another nebulizer treatment. So Jesse and I took David to the urgent care clinic, where the doctor said that his lungs are inflamed, so we got a prescription to open his airways. The medicine we got is called prednisone, which acts differently than the albuterol. Albuterol relaxes the muscles in his lungs. The prednisone reduces or removes the inflammation. While we were waiting for the doctor, I asked David if he could make me feel better, and he said no, because he's not a doctor yet.
On a related note, David also says his nose is walking, because it's not running. In fact, at this point, his nose has four states that he describes, and they are degrees of the same thing. Either his nose isn't working, or it's blinking (bwinking), or it's walking, or it's running. I wish I could figure out how he came up with the middle two. It certainly is inventive!
One day this week, David comes out of his preschool and tells me that he can roll his tongue! He's so excited! And he sticks out his tongue, and rolls it for me. And does it all the time now. It's quite fascinating, it would seem.
Now, remember last week when I talked about him "touching things with his eyes" and he literally does it? Well, yeah, as for David touching things when I tell him not to? It really is sarcastic...I told him very specifically that I didn't want him touching something, when we were at a store, and he reaches out his hand, and just "touches" it...not grabbing it or picking it up or anything. And looking for my reaction. I gave him none. But he didn't touch anything else, either.
On one of the mornings that I have David with me, I took the panels off the hot tub, to try to figure out where the leak is, since I fill it with water, and it leaks it all out. I spent some time explaining this to him. He understood. The funny thing about the hot tub leak is this: David's "crisis" when he wants me to hurry, is "before the hot tub leaks!" So when he wants me go hurry up, he says, "Hurry! Before the hot tub leaks! Let's go!" It doesn't matter what we're doing or where we're at, that's just the crisis that is resolved by us hurrying...if we don't hurry, the hot tub will leak...
David says, "Yes or no" when asking someone else, especially another kid, if they want to do something, and they don't respond. David says, "Do you want to go play?" Then no reponse. Then he says, "Yes or no." If there's still no response, then he complains to me about it. Today at the park he was playing with a kid that is 4, but David was more well spoken, articulate, and well behaved than the other kid. We were throwing a frisbee around and the kid asked me how David was able to throw it so well. My answer: I don't know, he just figured it out for himself. I tried to show the other kid how to throw the frisbee better, and after a while David got in on the act, trying to tell this other kid, too.
More stuff about school: He told me a kid at school said a bad word: "Booty," which he whispered to me. I didn't think it was a bad word, so I just said, "It's a word. Don't worry about it." It would also seem that David has been taught how to hold a pen/pencil/crayon in the normal, grown up way. It's an amazing thing! I didn't think this would happen for a couple more months, at least. But what it's done for him is make him suddenly want to color, and draw. So he gets out his crayon box, and I give him some paper, and he colors. Just moving the crayons across the paper, in different ways. It's not totally random, from what I can tell, but his very limited skill is being put to the test. It looks random, though. Sometimes he'll walk away from it, and come back and tell me that he has to finish his homework or his work...other times he announces that he's coloring a piece of paper...We went out to eat the other day and as he was coloring, he says he has a surprise for me. I haven't got him coloring in coloring books, though. Time to invest in some, I suppose.
Another thing that's happening is he's learning to tell time. He's getting concepts of the clock in his head, because he'll set arbitrary times for things, like "six minutes!" or "When it's 12?" I think he means the minute hand getting to the 12. There's other things about this, I'm sure. I just don't really know what they are.
I love his imagination: sometimes he says, with is "buddy" over his head, "I'm pretending to be a ghost!" I find it interesting that he says he's pretending to be, rather than actually is, a ghost.
Lastly, we've been talking about exercise, and staying healthy. David repeats some of this: "Exercise so I can stay healthy." But I'm not totally sure he understands what it means, as it's more than just "not being sick." But it's a topic of interest to him.
So I hope you're staying healthy and well...
Rusty
On a related note, David also says his nose is walking, because it's not running. In fact, at this point, his nose has four states that he describes, and they are degrees of the same thing. Either his nose isn't working, or it's blinking (bwinking), or it's walking, or it's running. I wish I could figure out how he came up with the middle two. It certainly is inventive!
One day this week, David comes out of his preschool and tells me that he can roll his tongue! He's so excited! And he sticks out his tongue, and rolls it for me. And does it all the time now. It's quite fascinating, it would seem.
Now, remember last week when I talked about him "touching things with his eyes" and he literally does it? Well, yeah, as for David touching things when I tell him not to? It really is sarcastic...I told him very specifically that I didn't want him touching something, when we were at a store, and he reaches out his hand, and just "touches" it...not grabbing it or picking it up or anything. And looking for my reaction. I gave him none. But he didn't touch anything else, either.
On one of the mornings that I have David with me, I took the panels off the hot tub, to try to figure out where the leak is, since I fill it with water, and it leaks it all out. I spent some time explaining this to him. He understood. The funny thing about the hot tub leak is this: David's "crisis" when he wants me to hurry, is "before the hot tub leaks!" So when he wants me go hurry up, he says, "Hurry! Before the hot tub leaks! Let's go!" It doesn't matter what we're doing or where we're at, that's just the crisis that is resolved by us hurrying...if we don't hurry, the hot tub will leak...
David says, "Yes or no" when asking someone else, especially another kid, if they want to do something, and they don't respond. David says, "Do you want to go play?" Then no reponse. Then he says, "Yes or no." If there's still no response, then he complains to me about it. Today at the park he was playing with a kid that is 4, but David was more well spoken, articulate, and well behaved than the other kid. We were throwing a frisbee around and the kid asked me how David was able to throw it so well. My answer: I don't know, he just figured it out for himself. I tried to show the other kid how to throw the frisbee better, and after a while David got in on the act, trying to tell this other kid, too.
More stuff about school: He told me a kid at school said a bad word: "Booty," which he whispered to me. I didn't think it was a bad word, so I just said, "It's a word. Don't worry about it." It would also seem that David has been taught how to hold a pen/pencil/crayon in the normal, grown up way. It's an amazing thing! I didn't think this would happen for a couple more months, at least. But what it's done for him is make him suddenly want to color, and draw. So he gets out his crayon box, and I give him some paper, and he colors. Just moving the crayons across the paper, in different ways. It's not totally random, from what I can tell, but his very limited skill is being put to the test. It looks random, though. Sometimes he'll walk away from it, and come back and tell me that he has to finish his homework or his work...other times he announces that he's coloring a piece of paper...We went out to eat the other day and as he was coloring, he says he has a surprise for me. I haven't got him coloring in coloring books, though. Time to invest in some, I suppose.
Another thing that's happening is he's learning to tell time. He's getting concepts of the clock in his head, because he'll set arbitrary times for things, like "six minutes!" or "When it's 12?" I think he means the minute hand getting to the 12. There's other things about this, I'm sure. I just don't really know what they are.
I love his imagination: sometimes he says, with is "buddy" over his head, "I'm pretending to be a ghost!" I find it interesting that he says he's pretending to be, rather than actually is, a ghost.
Lastly, we've been talking about exercise, and staying healthy. David repeats some of this: "Exercise so I can stay healthy." But I'm not totally sure he understands what it means, as it's more than just "not being sick." But it's a topic of interest to him.
So I hope you're staying healthy and well...
Rusty
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