We have just returned from a day at the beach park. Since Zak had today off we got up early and met some friends in Hale'iwa for breakfast at Hale'iwa Cafe. Then we headed to the park to play a little un-ultimate Frisbee. When all our extra playmates left, Zak, Koa and I headed for the sand and surf there at the park. We didn't spend any time in the water because there were warning signs about the strong current. So, we took that seriously and played in the sand. Koa would start to head towards the water every once in a while, but as he got closer he would get a little scared and the cold water hitting his toes would finally back him off completely! He has a healthy respect for the water. The waves really freak him out. I guess that is a good thing, but sometimes I get concerned about how scared he gets of the water. He especially hates the initial shock of the cold, so usually I will take a ball out with us and playing with it takes his attention off the temperature until he can adjust. Once he has adjusted he feels better about the water, but still knows he can't stand up by himself when a wave hits him and that keeps him a little tentative.
We definitely need to be spending more time at the beach, especially since we are starting to see the possibility of leaving Hawaii looming in the distance. Now that Zak is done with college hopefully we will be able to take better advantage of the weekends and afternoons to play at the beach more. I am also going to start (along with a couple of other moms) planning weekly outings to the beach, park and zoo for the young families at church. I'm pretty excited about that. We stopped doing the play group we had going at the beginning of last summer and no one was interested in hosting it again. I never really thought our house was suited for it, so I started considering doing something where we would be outside most of the time and I think that will be a little more doable.
It's been a long time since I updated The People on Koa development, so I thought I would do that today. His language skills seem to be changing faster than anything else. It's just exploded lately--he's adding several words a day now. He is also starting to put more and more words together into sentences both verbally and in sign language. Most of the time he still does a lot of one or two word answers, but then he will speak a complete sentence just as plane as day like when he shouted, "Thank you very much!" when he opened his Christmas gift from the Cousers. He is starting to use pronouns--mostly first person--and he uses them accurately. He likes to assign names or pronouns to objects such as, "Daddy's hat" and "my juice".
Koa has also started becoming quite the story teller. Sometimes I think he is repeating stories he has heard us tell, but I'm not so sure that he isn't also coming up with his own. As of late he has been telling our friends a story about a frog that we found in our lanai closet when we were putting away our Christmas decor. He wanted to touch the frog, so I carefully coaxed it into a box and then set it on the lanai for Koa to see. I figured the little amphibian would be frightened and hop away towards the plants. Instead it tried to jump on Koa's lap which was not OK with Koa and he screamed at the top of his lungs. So, when Koa tells the story he makes the sign for frog several times with much zeal, then points outside in any direction, then pats his leg where the frog jumped on him (all the while babbling like a mad man), and then finally Koa screams and says frog again with his hands! It is hilarious to watch especially for those of us who know what he is saying!
Koa has also started adding more words to his songs, so now we can sometimes tell what he is singing. This is especially true right after he has been to Bible class on Sundays or Wednesdays. The other day Koa was singing away when we got in the car and I started hearing a couple of words I recognized, so as we pulled out of the parking lot I stopped and asked his Bible class teacher if they had sung "This Little Light of Mine" in class that evening and she said yes. Now he sings "What Time Is It?", "This Little Light of Mine" and "The B-I-B-L-E". When we lay down with him at night before he goes to bed, we ask Koa what he did that day and he will often sing those songs. One day we pulled up to Stroller Strides while it was raining and when we got out of the car he started singing, "Rain, Rain, Go Away".
Koa is getting better with his colors and numbers as well. He will point out when he sees anything in a multiple of two. He has also started naming other numbers besides two and six, but not as consistently as those two numbers. As far as colors go, he has moved on from Orange being his favorite - now he loves yellow. He knows red, blue, orange and green, but none as consistently as yellow. I think it is partly because he likes to say the word, "lellow", but also because our laptops are yellow. That is always the first thing he says when he sees my computer and he loves to point out that they are both yellow when they are next to each other! He also points out anything he sees that is yellow when we are out for an adventure. For instance, the other day we were driving down the road and there was a guy on a motorcycle with a yellow helmet and he kept saying, "Lellow. Hat. Lellow. Hat." until I recognized the object of his interest.
We've decided that we are soon going to be able to leave Koa at home by himself. One night Zak and I were going to the house of some friends to pray for our Malama Groups the week they started. We thought we were only going to be gone for about an hour and a half and asked our friends, the Cousers, to come down and watch him for us. We didn't give them any directions for putting him to bed because we thought we'd be back by then. The prayer meeting turned out to be three hours! When we got home the Cousers reported that while we were gone Koa walked them through the going to bed process. When he got tired he asked to be picked up, then he laid his head on Wes's shoulder and said, "Night-night.", then when they started trying to figure out what to do he said, "PJ's" and actually took them to the pile of clean clothes in our room to help them find some. Then he told them he needed to shee-shee and went to bed with no trouble. Also, earlier in the evening when Koa's ipod suddenly stopped working and Wes told Koa he thought it needed new batteries, Koa took him to the closet and showed him where the screw driver was (because you need one to open the battery cover). Then he stood there motioning because he knew the batteries were also somewhere in the closet but he couldn't give specific enough directions for Wes to follow.
As for motor skills, Koa has been working on walking on very narrow things (like curbs) where he has to put one foot in front of the other. As he does it he says, "Whoa, whoa." and if he falls off he says, "Oh, shoot!" He will also try to imitate whatever Zak does if he tells him to walk a certain way, like backwards or turning in circles, or galloping. Koa is also really working on his Frisbee throws. He knows that it is a different throw than a ball and for a brief time he had it figured out, but as of recently he does the throw backwards. He desperately wants to be able to play with us!
On a less exciting note, we did have to deal with a bout of illness this month right after the first of the year. Koa has a little friend who had a spell of the Rota virus and their whole family was sick in bed for a week. At our New Year's party she and Koa were playing with a couple of her toys and two days later Koa woke up from a nap and promptly threw up. It was quite out of the blue and he was somewhat sick for the rest of that day, but he only threw up one more time. For the next couple of days he was a little more lethargic, but that was about it. He seemed to fight of the nasty bug with very little problem! So as far as I am concerned this is also an exciting piece of news--his immune system does the job it is supposed to do!! Yea!
If you have made it this far I commend your deep commitment to our family, or rather, Koa. Thank you for your interest! Now make a comment, for heaven's sake--we want to know you are still out there!!
