Snapshots

1. From another room I hear big sister teaching John something. Talking to him in that teaching way–the nice teaching voice, not the frustrated big sibling talking-down voice. I'm not listening to the content, though, and so I'm surprised to walk into the kitchen and find that she has taught John to unload the dishwasher by having him remove all the clean bowls and plates and stack them neatly on the not-freshly-mopped kitchen floor. He is obeying with rapt, sweet, little-brother attention. At the moment I appear, she is suggesting to him that he hold one dish at a time, attempt to pull to stand using the counter, and move the dish to the countertop. His voice quickly changes to frustrated, and countertop work will need more accommodations, so I stop that part of it, hopefully gently enough for them to still feel successful. 

2. We have a small hallway now and it's a luxury. I'm in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. I hear exaggerated panting, and thumping, as John either crawl-runs or kneel-runs down the hallway and deliberately crashes himself down onto the worn living room carpet, rolling full over like a crashing car.

"Mommy, did you hear someone running?" he asks expectantly, now only panting realistically. He is lying happily on his back, looking up at the ceiling of what he will probably always imagine to be a vast living room.

 "Yes, who could that have been?"

"It was meeee!"

"You were running and crashing down on the floor!"

"Yes, well I have to go. I'm going to go back and open the closet door and spin in the chair that turns around and then I'm going to Run Down the Hallway!" He takes off again.

Wow. This infant about whom a non-leg doctor wrote "I think this young man may have cerebral palsy. He has quite a hip thrust" before the other doctors guessed. Who could not get himself into a sitting position at 13 months old.  This boy who at two would spend an hour at a time throwing a huge pile of blocks systematically across the room and then back to the other side, repeatedly. Who was grunting (though with good conversational timing) rather than talking at three and a half. 

But this is five and a half. Yes, well, he has to go.

3. John finished the school day today with a scrape on his cheekbone. He got hit with a ball in the outdoor playhouse. I already know that he cried and got ice put on his face. We talk about what happened.

"I got hit with a basketball."

"Was it big and orange?" 

"No, it had black pentagons on it."

"Oh, you got hit with a soccer ball."

"Noooo! Eric did it!"

(Oops, corrected too strongly.) "What happened next?"

"Miz A picked me up and said 'Let's go take a water break' and took me out of the white house."

(Conversation about how much water they drank.)

"What did you do then?"

"We went back in the house and Miz A said, 'John's back!'"