We’re Completely Caught Up Now
Alright, so unless Melissa is hiding some photos on her phone, I believe we’re all caught up on the blog. This is mostly commentary at this point, just sharing some thoughts.
I find myself going through a lot emotionally, because the two kids are at such different spots. With Nina, I’m trying not to get TOO excited by the things I see her learning. I’m pushing whenever I can to teach her more, and it is so hard to remember where Ian was at her age, and even harder to recognize that ultimately comparing the children is irrelevant. Everybody tells you not to do so, but how can one help but use what little experience they have in a situation like this? She’s really cruising around, and walking always seems like it is going to happen “in the next couple days.” You could say she’s lagging on gross motor skills, but you can’t say she’s unwilling to learn or try. She’s been fighting since before she was born, and I remind myself of that probably too often — this is the same little girl that had a 50% chance of not making it. Flip a coin sometime and think of all the things that Nina has accomplished. And then thank God.
With Ian I try not to get too disappointed that he doesn’t really want to spend time with me sometimes. Because I know he doesn’t mean it, and that he’s four. He’s doing great at school, his Tumble-Time teacher actually wrote that Ian is the best listener in her class. The best? Care to share some technique there, Ms. Jill? Ian went through a spell of accidents, during which time he was simply too excited by whatever was going on to stop and pee. We’ve straightened that situation out by no longer asking and instead telling him to do so every hour or so. “Go. Potty.” “I don’t have t-” “Go. Potty.” It is amazing hearing his vocabulary grow. I wish I could see a sort of map of what he knows so that we could work on the things he does not know, because you can see it in his eyes when you try to teach him things one-on-one… he’s absorbing all of it. It is also crazy how much he remembers about some things… he asked to go to Boyne Mountain the other day “The place with the waterslide with the elevators, where we slept there, because we were lost.” (The latter part is not true, we got there just fine.) I should also note that this morning Ian really wanted to spend time with me, which is great, mornings are the main time that he tells me to go away. The other night we played a game on my Xbox 360 called Kinectimals, and we had a blast together, actually laughing out loud. There’s a part where you hold your hand up and point it around at the TV, and it shows “sparkles” where you can dig. We then do the hand motion for digging like a dog or cat might, and the treasure is revealed on the screen. He ate it up.
