I know I am really far behind on the posts, so I am going to try to catch up in baby steps.
A while back we took Koa in to see Dr. Jen for his three-year-old well child check up. This was his very first appointment with Dr. Jen. We tried to prepare him ahead of time for what would go on since he hasn't been to a doctor for himself in about a year, I think. We explained that she would listen to his heart and check his eyes and ears and she might ask him to jump or draw something.
While we were talking with Dr. Jen she asked us if Koa could jump on one foot or draw circles. Did he know his ABC's? Apparently someone should have prepared us for the appointment because for a couple of those things we had no idea. We sat there with blank stares and said, "Um, I don't know. Koa, can you jump on one foot?" Finally Jen told us, "These are four-year-old skills. I already filled out the chart for his three year old skills." Then she started commenting on his language skills and how they had changed over the past several months--what things had improved etc.
That's when it dawned on me (again) just how fortunate we are to have Jen as our family doctor. Although she had never seen Koa in her office for anything concerning him, she knew him well enough to be able to fill out all of his skills chart. How cool is that! She even said things like, "He's using his pronouns more accurately now." Maybe she should be writing these blog posts! I wonder what she would charge for that...
For the most part during the appointment Koa was pretty cooperative (by stubborn three year old standards). He did not want to even try the "jump on one foot" maneuver, but for several days afterward he spent a lot of time showing us he could do it.
Anyway, Koa is very healthy and seems to be progressing well in all ways for his age. We also got to talk to Jen about his vaccinations in order to decide how we should progress with that. We talked about whether or not our ministry to homeless people should effect any of our decisions. We have decided to proceed with our original plan to only vaccinate for tetanus right now and chicken pox if he doesn't get the antibodies by the time he is 12-13 years old. We will follow the same protocol with Caspian except maybe get the tetanus shot a little sooner. Of course, should we travel or be stationed outside the US all these things shall be reconsidered at that time.
I'm sure I have missed a lot of great stories about Koa, but I was reminded of this one this morning and had to share.
When Koa was little bitty we started a little routine of laying him down in his crib to sleep and then saying, "Mama loves you. Daddy loves you. But you know who loves you the most? God does." We figured that was a basic truth from which we could build many other lessons. So, we have continued that little phrase with Caspian. However, one night as I was laying Caspian down to sleep, I had a momentary lapse in good grammar and I said, "You know who loves you the mostest?" And from Koa's bed (where he was supposed to be sleeping!) I hear, "MOSES? Who's Moses?" So we had to have a discussion about who Moses is, but that I really meant that God loves him the MOST!
Right. Like that was going to work. Now anytime I say, "You know who loves you the most?" Koa says, "Moses!" Three years of teaching down the tubes with one slip of the tongue! Let that be a lesson to me.
Even more confusing to him is that there is a guy name Moses who picks up our yard debris. Yeah, Koa, Mommy and Daddy love you, but you know who loves you the most? The yard guy!
Yesterday Caspian turned four months old and today Koa turned three years old, so we have much to record!
At four months Caspian weighs about 16 pounds, has almost grown out of his six month old clothes and still has the most kissable cheeks imaginable! He has been a much happier baby lately since I have been off dairy for quite a while. It seems that it took quite a while to get it all out of our systems, but it has made a big difference for him. Now if I have even the slightest bit of dairy it really effects him. The other day I used part of a boxed tomato soup as an ingredient in something I made for dinner and didn't think to check the ingredients. It turns out it had milk in it and poor Caspian immediately started spitting up and has a terrible diaper rash now! At least now we know what causes all of his problems and as long as I can avoid dairy like the plague he seems to do really well.
He has been working on rolling a lot lately. He has the front to back down pat and can usually do it at will. Occasionally he looks like he knows that he can do it but has forgotten the mechanics of it and he lays there twisting and squirming and looking over his shoulder but can't quite seem to accomplish his goal. Other times he rolls over in his sleep unintentionally and it wakes him up and makes him mad. Now he is working on rolling from back to front but has only made it to half way. He rolls up on his side and just lays there and plays with his hands.
Caspian seems to be a very goal-oriented kid. You can see the determination in his face when he finds something that he thinks he can reach/do and he will just stare in that direction and struggle and wiggle like he is willing himself to be able to accomplish the goal. I don't remember Koa being so focused. Koa hit all of his motor skills pretty early, but he never looked like he was trying to work on it. Caspian is all business!
He's starting to grab at things and has discovered his hands which is always fun to see. He will just be sitting and playing and when his hand catches his eye and he just stops and examines it on all sides for a while and acts completely fascinated.
He continues to have very tiny little smiles. Even when he laughs his smiles are pretty small. His little giggles are just so sweet, though. He prefers to be upright, so he spends quite a bit of time each day in his little jumper and is really starting to bounce a lot in that and can spin himself around to look in whichever direction he wants.
He has also started to become very demanding from time to time and we have started training him to "talk in his nice voice". One morning when I got up to feed him in the wee hours he decided the milk just was not coming fast enough and was screaming in this very high-pitched squeally voice. I let him know that was not acceptable and then laid him down for a minute or two until he calmed down. Then we tried again. He did fine the next time around and he was less squeally in general after that. It's amazing how quickly they can learn good or bad habits and how early this all starts!
He still gets very demanding about wanting to be in his bed to sleep and will gripe at us if we try to get him to go to sleep elsewhere. He will eventually give in with less of a fight than Koa ever would at this age. Today we had him out in the yard and it was nice and sunny. Zak was just sure he would want to take a nap in the sunshine (and get a little dose of vitamin D), but he was quite sure he did NOT want to sleep in the yard, so close to his cozy bed. We eventually brought him in the house and he immediately snuggled in and went to sleep. He's very easy to put to bed. I've got to be thankful for that!
We celebrated three years with Koa last night by having friends over for dinner and ice cream. Koa adores spaghetti, so we had spaghetti with meat sauce and Caesar salad and roasted garlic bread sticks. Koa specifically asked for an ice cream cone for his birthday, so I bought some cones and made two batches of ice cream--roasted banana (with coconut milk) and chocolate peanut butter.
Koa called all the people he wanted to come and invited them to come celebrate his birthday. It was pretty cute watching him act all grown up and working on his phone manners. The only little kid he called was his friend Caleb. When Koa asked him to come to his birthday Caleb immediately started singing "Happy Birthday."
Dinner ended up being a lot more hectic than I had hoped it would be because Zak and I were working on our Greek assignment all morning and I didn't get things prepped as I had hoped I would. So dinner was a little more hectic than I had hoped it would be. It was still lots of fun because everyone just pitched in and we had fun cooking together and visiting until dinner time.
Today he has been enjoying some of the things he got for his birthday from his friends. We spent some time out in the yard working in our garden and riding his new little tricycle. You can find some pictures of our fun day in his brand new three year old photo album. After that we came inside and planted some seeds indoors in preparation for the coming season of planting! Koa got just the right tools for helping with that!
I thought we probably needed proof that a Zumwalt boy has actually washed dishes!
I know most of you read this blog for information on the under-aged in our household, so I figured I should give you a little update and one fun story just to keep you interested!
When we got our first small shipment it was partially ours and partially the Couser's, so there were a few things here and there that were starting to look familiar. When Koa went in to use the potty one time he noticed that he recognized the bath mat. He looked at me and said, "Is this ours?" I said, "Yes." He asked, "From our green house?" I affirmed that and added, "This is our new house and soon we will have all of our stuff here." He said, "This is our new house? CONGRATULATIONS!"
As you can see from that little story, his vocabulary is really exploding and he says all kinds of interesting things now! He is quite the little evangelist, too. He will sing or talk or shout about Jesus whenever he gets a chance! Sometimes he will be out on our front steps all by himself just telling anyone who will listen about Jesus. Yesterday we were at Ikea rummaging through the scratch and dent section and the whole time we were there he had a lamp he was using as a microphone and he was singing/yelling, "Run to Jesus! Run to Jesus!" the whole time! I kept asking him to lower his voice and he would for a time, but the message just could not be suppressed and in very little time he would be yelling it again. Can you really discipline for that?
He is getting pretty good at using the potty all by himself. When we are out somewhere he will insist that I carry on with whatever I am doing and he will do it by himself. There is usually some part of it that he can't quite do completely by himself (sometimes it starts with getting the door open to get in the bathroom). I can't really suppress myself from going in and keeping watch, but one day he went in the men's room and Zak was perfectly willing to let him try. We were sitting where we could see the door and when Zak did go in, the only thing Koa couldn't do by himself was reach the paper towel. However, you should have seen the look on the poor guy's face who walked in on the little two year old sitting on the potty! That was priceless! There have certainly been some adventures along the way as we make this transition to independence. I will have to blog about some of them for posterity sake at some point--mostly to remind me to just wait until the next child is 18 before we embark on this milestone!
Koa is really loving the new way of dressing that the rest of us are hesitant to adapt. He loves to wear long pants or "hot pants" as he likes to call them. He reminds me to bring his jacket when we go out the door even though he doesn't wear it for long when we do put it on because he usually gets too hot. We got Koa a pair of galoshes (Locals) before we moved to Portland and packed them with the rest of our belongings, but he did not forget in the month that he did not see them! He asked for them multiple times and when he saw me putting on covered shoes one day he insisted that he needed his "bootses". We got them out and he started wearing these bright blue boots everywhere we went! To Zak's dismay he doesn't even want to wear slippers anymore! So, I went to a second hand store the other day and bought him a couple of pairs of regular shoes and he danced around like a crazy man with only one shoe on while Zak was trying to see if they fit. For the rest of the day we could hardly get him to take them off. Surprisingly, he can put them on by himself and gets them on the right feet. I thought that was just a product of wearing slippers all the time, but apparently not. I can't tell you how grateful I am to not have to bend over and put them on him!
Speaking of not being able to bend over for any length of time without almost passing out...I am certainly getting rounder! I have had a bit of a cold for the past week which makes breathing even more of a challenge. Other than that, I am still feeling pretty good. My weird back issue rears its ugly head from time to time, but I cannot even begin to tell you how thankful I am that it hasn't been any worse during our move! With all of the plane flights and different beds and moving things from place to place I know it could have been SO much worse, but I have really done very well. I haven't been exercising as much as I would like, but I do some stretching every now and then and it seems to help keep everything working relatively well. Praise God!
Little BZ2 is getting slightly less busy. I don't feel him or her moving all day and all night anymore--there are occasional breaks is the action, but when he/she is moving it feels like there is furniture being re-arranged in there! Sometimes I feel my entire upper body move in response. I don't remember Koa ever keeping me awake at night with his movements either (there's isn't much that will keep me awake at night!), but this kid can definitely do so. One night at like 3 AM it actually felt like my whole belly was vibrating and then the baby was running laps on the inside. It was the weirdest thing I have ever felt--and I could NOT go to sleep! Koa likes to tell me what the baby is doing in there--it's usually a sport. "She's playing baseball!" (Yes, he still insists the baby is a girl and she will have green eyes, green hair and a green shirt.)
We have chosen a doctor/midwife very close to us. She does home births and birthing center births. We haven't totally decided which we are going to do, but I think it will probably be at the birthing center. We figure you kind of lose the "comfort of your own home" benefit when your own home still feels a little foreign. We'll see. We still have a couple of months...
We're still not certain on a first name for a girl or a middle name for a boy, so if you have any ideas we are still open to suggestions!
Today Koa and I decided to get out early and head to Hickam Beach for some kayaking with friends. I haven't been kayaking since well before Koa was born so I had no idea how the adventure would go, but I thought we should give it a try.
We were running late, and got to the beach a little before 10 AM only to find that they don't rent kayaks on Mondays. So, when our friends arrived around 10:30 we decided to head to the other side of the island to the Kaneohe Bay marina to see if they were operating today. They were, so we finally got in the water sometime around 11:30 (not so early anymore!) and headed across the bay. The guys at the marina were so nice. They even rigged up a little single paddle (from a broken one) for Koa to use. Koa did awesome! He sat in the boat so nicely the whole time. He would use his paddle to help along the way or to splash me--which ever he thought was most fun at the time. About half way to our destination I really started having trouble steering. I could not get the boat to stay straight. I knew Koa's extra weight would create a little drag, but I was really struggling to get to the beach and couldn't figure out why. I decided I was just tired and way out of practice and the current was just kicking my tail.
When we got to the beach we played with some crabs and picked up treasures along the sand. It is really rare to find whole shells on any beach in Hawaii. It is pretty rare to even find small, recognizable pieces of shells, but we found whole piles of perfect shells and coral. It was really cool! When we got ready to leave we started to pick up my boat to put it back in the water and realized that it was half full of water! No wonder I was having so much trouble! So, we emptied it out and Koa decided to ride with Auntie Lisa on the way back. At least that way I wouldn't have my extra weight, his extra weight and whatever water leaked in on the return trip.
On the way back, Lisa sang to Koa the whole way. He thought that was great. Until he started to get sleepy... Since he was just kind of perched on a little seat and not down in the kayak he was very topsy-turvy. If he fell asleep there was going to be a rude awakening! So, Lisa kept splashing him with water from her paddle to keep him awake the rest of the way.
Right before we paddled into the harbor, a boat must have had some kind of oil spill or something. As I was approaching the pier, I noticed this awful smell and saw the oil slick on top of the water. I looked over to Lisa to see if it was over by her, too, just in time to see Koa reaching for the colors in the water....and topple overboard! I turned my kayak and headed toward them and watched her calmly scoop Koa back into the boat in front of her. He took it like a champ. He didn't cry, or even cough (so I guess he didn't swallow any oil!) I had this picture in my mind that I was going to have to wash him down with Dawn dish detergent like they do with all the marine birds after an oil spill, but we just rinsed him off when we got to the pier and he was fine! I couldn't believe he made it all the way across the bay and back without incident and then fell in the water in the dirty harbor!!
By the time we got inside and turned in our boats it was almost 2:30!! Koa's nap time is usually 12:30 to about 3:30. Well, we missed that by a long shot. We decided to stop and get something to eat since we were all starving and I had only brought a few snacks (thinking we would be home in time for lunch with our original plan). We stopped at Subway and I ordered a foot long steak and cheese. Koa ate almost half of it along with half a bag of chips and a piece of cookie that Lisa was nice enough to share with him! I think he was hungry! By the time we got home it was 4:20 and he had just barely gone to sleep in the car! What a day!
...in attitude and all. It was almost like someone had told Koa that when he became two all of his answers should be "no" and he should be fussy and stubborn about every possible thing. I was a bit concerned at first, but then I realized he was about on schedule for his routine of "checking to make sure all the rules still apply". This usually happens about every six weeks and as long as we stick to our guns and don't give any slack we pass through it without too much stress. This time it lasted several days, but we made it through and now our (mostly) sweet boy is back for another six weeks or so.
You will find pictures in the brand new 2 year old photo album of Koa going ice skating for the very first time. I was a bit concerned when we left Stroller Strides and started towards the skating rink that day since Koa had been in his mood for a day or two already (i.e. yelling "no" at anyone who told him happy birthday!) I just wasn't sure it was going to be much of a success. I even called Zak to see if he had any reason to opt out. He said, "We've already planned it, let's just do it." So we trudged on... When we got to the Ice Palace I got Koa's skates and started putting them on and he was very excited to get to wear "boots" (he was considerably less affectionate about his long pants, however), so I thought that was a good sign. When he was all laced up I set him down on the floor (and my toe while I was still wearing slippers! OUCH!) and he immediately started to scream. He was not interested in that unbalanced feeling! He didn't want anything to do with standing up, but he also was not interested in sitting down. At this point I was pretty certain the day was a wash!
When Zak got there he took Koa for a minute while I got my skates on and took a twirl (HA!) on the ice to get my bearings. Oh, my goodness! Ice skating is so much harder than I remember it being! At this point I had very bad mental images of me falling on top of my poor, unhappy, two year old son on his birthday! There was no way this was going to be a successful day. I should probably have hung up the skates right there and then. But, no, I took Koa from Zak and headed for the ice. I set him down immediately inside the rink and his feet started flailing and I was doing everything I could to maintain my balance and all I hear is....giggling? I couldn't believe my ears! Koa thought it was so funny to be completely off balance apparently. So we spent the next hour or so being just that--off-balance! It took me a while to figure out just how to help Koa along so that it wasn't killing my back, but once we got it figured out we had a ton of fun! We didn't even have any uncontrolled falls. The only times we both ended up down on the ice was by choice. Zak ended up playing photographer this time, but I'm pretty sure we will be doing this again some day soon and then the tables will turn! Koa has been asking for "states" every since that day. We will have videos sometime soon. You will have to bug Zak about that.
We finished that part of the day off with lunch which was pizza with Daddy and Uncle Brad and then I ran Koa ragged at Costco and took him home and put him to bed. After his nap we played for a while and then opened presents from Stimple and Tutu and had dinner. After dinner we took him to Baskin Robbins and let him get his very own scoop of chocolate ice cream which he insisted on eating with the tester spoon instead of the real spoon. You will have to imagine the mess--we didn't take the camera! It was pretty late already so I'm sure we looked like terrible parents taking our two year old to get ice cream at 9 PM. Oh well!
We had intended to do a dinner with friends or something as a low-key party for him, but this week has just been so crazy with other activities that we just could not seem to fit it in the schedule. I think he had a pretty good day anyway.
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!!
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!!
