David Weekly, V3 - 19

David is lonely, I think. I can't exactly ask him if he's lonely, but I can tell that he needs playmates. He doesn't see Avery and Jared as much anymore, but does ask to play with them, and does want to play with other kids. I'm actively trying to expand my network of people who have kids so he can have friends that he can see on a regular basis. This is new territory for me, so we'll see how it goes. I've also asked him what other kinds of activiities he'd like to be involved it. Karate is one, which is my suggestion, and gymnastics is another. He likes dancing, so I'll keep him in that.

David has decided to watch Word World again, and is loving it all over again. I think he got bored with Diego, so switched back to that for a little while. It's interesting to see him interact with it now that he's a bit older, and has better reading skills than he did before. And speaking of reading skills...

Saturday (May 22), we went to buy more DVD's for David's reward, since he had all check marks for the week. I take him to the kids section, and he sees the Leap Frog DVD, and says, "I want the Math Circus!" It didn't even occur to me that he read it...I almost took it for granted. I was more impressed, and focused on, the fact that he wanted math rather than reading. It's elementary math, adding and subtracting. But he watched it over and over. The next big prize we'll shoot for is some good dinosaur (or other) books. I asked him when we went to the park, what the dinosaurs were that some kid had, just to see if he knew, and he said, "Karate-saurus" which I heard as "Chirosaurus" because he said it so fast. I was amazed. But then I asked how he knew, and he said, "I just made it up!"

I bought for myself an old TV Show on DVD called "UltraMan", which is a Japanese import that I watched when I was a kid. David really liked it, almost more than the DVD's he got for himself. It's basically a serial version of Japanese monster movies, where the hero turns into UltraMan and then fights the monsters who are trying to destroy Japan. David got really wrapped up in some of these shows, and would come and sit in my lap when the action got to be intense (according to his 4 year old mind). Overall he really liked it. I knew this because he would say "Ultra-Man!" over and over.

Sunday, we went to the beach for a little while to watch the sun set. We ended up in the water, and were skipping broken up pieces of sand-dollars that we'd find, since they're flat. David was calling them "flats," too. "Oh look daddy! A flat!" And he'd pick it up and throw it. Then he'd ask, "how many times did it skip?" He fell asleep in the car on the way over there, and we had about 45 minutes to play. I realized it seemed too short for him (of course, when a kid is playing, no matter when it ends it seems too short), so I promised him we'd go back for a longer time after school if he was good. He was good on Monday (check mark), and good on Tuesday (check mark), so we ate dinner, and had about 90 minutes to play. We met another little boy out at the beach. By the way, it was Indian Rocks Beach for Tuesday, and it was deserted! I didn't expect that. I wonder if the oil spill had anything to do with it. There were a few people here and there, but not a large number of people like I'm used to seeing. David loved playing with this child, and wanted to play "chase." The other boy is a couple of months younger, and wasn't so much into playing chase. So David would taunt him, mildly, just to get him to chase David. "na-na-boo-boo..." I think. It's a kids' taunt, but I'm not sure if that's the one. They would run between the water and the chair with our stuff on it. David was very happy!

On our way back from the beach, David sees Burger King, and wants me to stop so he can get something. I tell him we'll wait for the weekend. It was amazing how matter-of-fact he was about it. Very adult-like.

Wednesday, David went with Jesse to Jesse's Bible Study, and played very well with the kids that were there with their mom's. I asked Jesse to see if they would be willing to have their kids do a play date w/ David. I'm hopeful that they will, because David gets along very well with those kids, according to Jesse. I asked her about what she thinks is the difference between the kids at Bible Study and the kids at David's daycare, and she says it's because the kids at Learning Space aren't very nice to David. I have to wonder if David's not the "not nice" one, but then again, it may be a "boy" thing. It's very good that he can get along w/ the Bible Study kids, though. That gives me hope.

Thursday night we went to Avery and Jared's year end ceremony, and David was great until the (to a 4 year old mind) "boring" part, when they announce the awards. David was happy to be there for his cousins.

So I ask David what he wants to tell everyone:

"I had a good day today on Friday, 3 Fridays, and I had a good day here, here, here...Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and on 3 Friday checkmarks. I Love my daddy and my mommy and I have a sister, her name is Colleen. And she is very helpful and she's very delicate when I don't play with her, and she's not delicate and she's very happy when I do play with her and I love my sissy, and I like my cats up at the Missouri. And I want you to say I made a beautiful boat with a ladybug (he points to the picture he colored.) And I had a picture like that (he points to the one with his graduation cap and gown.) David likes some dinosaurs. And not T-Rexes."

He was watching me type as he was speaking, and made sure I typed the words he was saying. He was pointing at the calendar when he was telling me the first part. He's proud of his checkmarks. This week, he had 4. Wednesday was his bad day. It's amazing to me that he will go and put the check mark or the X, all on his own. I don't have to do a thing to get him to do it.

I asked Learning Space what David will be doing now that VPK is over, and they will be basically continuing w/ VPK work, because according to Ms. Nadine, "They'll lose everything they've learned..." if they don't keep doing it.

Reward for this week: Burger King! He'd been asking me to go at very inconvenient times, so I told him if he gets enough checkmarks, he can go there for dinner on Friday. I also told him that on the weekend he can go to McDonald's PlayPlace...He got enough checkmarks, so we had dinner at BK. David was very happy about this...

Lastly, I scheduled David for a Shriner's Appointment: October 5, 2010, at 2:15 PM. It's good for a checkup, and I need to ask for some help on addressing his desire to have 10 fingers like I do...for now, I just say it's the way it is...