What a week this last one was! We had near hurricane force winds (around 60 mph) blow through here on Tuesday night and we spent the rest of the week recovering from that. We had no electricity for two days last week--one for no apparent reason and one from the storm. There were trees torn out of the ground, terrible traffic woes, flooding, high surf, and 18 power poles knocked down on the leeward side of the island. It was a little crazy around here to say the least. I wasn't feeling well for a couple of the days, so Koa and I mostly stayed home to ride it out. Zak had to work and was teaching a class so he couldn't stay home. Fortunately his building had power, so he showered there in the morning.
Zak had two of his three finals of this semester a couple days ago. On Friday he finished Ethics in Leadership and on Saturday he finished Philosophy of Religion. He is now one final away from having his bachelor's degree complete! He doesn't officially graduate until March, but he will be done with classes on December 15th! Yea!!
Zak also wrapped up our Malama Group Leadership Training yesterday, so we had a little celebration with ice cream and brownies at our final meeting. It was rather emotional for some folks, and I think the nervousness about this whole thing is starting to set in with most of us! We'll have our first group meetings the week of January 6th, so we have about a month to get ready.
Yesterday seemed like a culmination of the rest of the week as we rushed around to get last minute things done and nothing went smoothly! It was a day of Murphy's law, I think. Everything went wrong from a broken copy machine at the church to running in the commissary for a couple of things and having someone set off an alarm, so I was stuck there while they did a "thorough investigation." Of course it was my idea to go to the Hickam commissary because I thought it would be quicker! That was how our whole day went. By the time we got home we felt like we had participated in the Honolulu Marathon along with several of our friends. Fortunately we have fewer blisters to show for it today. I think we have mostly recovered.
Koa was happy to begin the week with mow-mow day. That is what he calls the lawn mower (or any other small engine he hears). He spends most of his Monday mornings dashing back and forth from his step in the window of our bedroom to the step stool that I usually set out on the lanai for him. As the mower leaves one area Koa runs to the other area to try to catch a glimpse! He can't get enough of it!
In addition to all the madness this week an important evolution has taken place at our house. Koa has moved on to slippas (flip flops) without the additional strap to hold them on his feet. Prior to this week if we even so much as thought about putting a strapless slipper on his foot he would have a meltdown right there in front of the house and refuse to take another step until the offending shoe had been removed! However, this week he decided he wanted to try wearing his shoes around the house sans strap (usually shoes stay outside at our house), so I let him try it. Eventually I went to him with the scissors and chopped off the extra strap. From that day forth he has been sans straps. He's still learning the art of clenching with his toes to keep them on when we pick him up or he is sitting in a chair without his feet touching, but he is catching on very quickly. I must say, I don't know if I have ever seen a prouder Zak!
Along with the big-boy shoes apparently comes imagination. He has really started to use his anyway. For a while he has done things like pretend he has food in his mouth when there is no food in the vicinity just to get a reaction out of me because I always think he has stuck a rock in his mouth or something. Sometimes he will take my pack of gum and mess with it and then pretend he is chewing gum. Well, today he decided Daddy was in the computer desk and he would get me to open the little door to the tower for him (because the magnet is too strong for him to open without a handle) and he would yell inside, "Hi, Dada!" and shut the door real quick. Then he wanted me to do it, too. So, we took turns saying, "Hi, Dada!" and "Bye, Dada!" into the computer desk and he thought this was great fun. For the rest of the morning anytime he closed a door in the rest of the house he would pretend that Dada was on the other side.
I think he is also getting the concept of sharing a little bit. I'm sure we're not home free, but there have been some good steps made this week, I think. When he goes to the potty I still give him one chocolate chip for going without a fuss and one if he tells me he needs to go. So, when we get out the candy container I tell him if he gets one or two. (If he only gets one he tries to plead his case by holding up four fingers and saying, "Two?") Well, one day this week he got two, so he very carefully reached in and got out the first one and put it in his mouth. Then he reached in and got the second one, looked at it and offered it to me. I thought it was so sweet and I let him know that it was very nice and told him "thank you." Then he prompted me to open my mouth because he wanted to see it. I had already started to chew it and I put the remainder on my tongue for him to see and he exclaimed, "Oh, it's a mess!" It's so funny when he does stuff like that because most of our communication is done in one word sentences. So, when he makes a statement like that it always catches me off guard. Since that day he has shared his candy with both Zak and me, and twice it has been when he only got one candy.
He's also learning a lot more about language through his signs. One day this week he had been drawing on an envelope from a card we had received and he brought it to me and I looked at it and said, "What is this?" and he gave me the sign for "surprise!" I would never have even thought to teach him that sign, but he learned it on Signing Time.
I absolutely adore those videos. I never thought I would say that about a children's video series. However one day this week he asked to watch them and Zak said, "No, how 'bout you go get a book?" Normally that statement would have been met with much rejoicing and running to get a whole stack of books, but this time he just got kind of sad and never would go get us a book. That happened a couple of times so we decided the videos needed to go back to the library for a while. They were due anyway, but normally I would have checked out some more or at least renew some of the same ones. This time however we left empty handed. We still work on all the signs and he still uses them very well, but we figured a break from the videos was a healthy thing. Even though the videos are educational, Zak and I don't want to raise a child with the TV. Ya know, I don't think I have woken up with "The Silly Pizza Song" in my head once since then!
We get to wrap up this week with another vacation to the Big Island (this will be our 4th!). We are celebrating the end of Zak's BA in Religion and using this as our family Christmas gift to each other. We get to stay on Kilauea Military Camp which is a very nice area and it gets nice and chilly there during the winters, so we can indulge in hot cocoa and fires in the fireplace without sweating while we do! They have been having blizzards over on Mauna Kea and got a foot of snow a couple of days ago, so we may actually get to see some snow while we are there! Then we can go to the beach when we get tired of the cold! That's the beauty of Hawaii!!
