It was fun with Papa!

John's day has been pretty good. He woke up early enough this morning to say good-bye to Papa, Mark's dad, who had gotten to stay with us for a week and now was going to stay with Mark's brother and his family for a week before returning home. Getting to spend time with Papa was a real treat and John enjoyed his company immensly, as did we all.

We did have a few new tricks for the day. John figured out that he could pick up a fig newton from his tray and put it in his own mouth and take a nice big bite and also that he doesn't particularly care for fig newton. The face was priceless as was the immediate handing over of the fruited cake. Shawna, John's phycial therapist, came today. Her usual day is Thursday but John was ready and had a great time in his gait trainer. He didn't even cry when she put him in it and then moved around quite a bit and with much more evident purpose than he had ever done before. Today was also John's first day to work on his homework from school yesterday. Amy, his speech therapist at the MOOG School for the Deaf in Columbia, Mo, gave him the assignment of learning to pretend to feed a stuffed animal. This is quite a delightful homework assignment and one that we will be enjoying through the week. Today we were feeding the elephant that Mark and I got him when he was in New Orleans. He liked sticking the spoon in the elephants mouth, he was even okay with giving it a drink from the cup, but most of all he liked to use one of his oral syringes and give it medicine in its belly and oh checking it's eyes, ears and mouth with the pen light was the best of all. The second time he played with this for dad he mostly just wanted to medicate the elephant, belly, mouth whatever, he was just sure that the elephant needed medication now! You can tell what happens a lot at our house.

Today at lunch he decided that he only wanted Sprite, which he shouldn't have, but when I gave him the empty bottle he hugged it, worked it around to where he could tip it up to his mouth and made sure that the very last drop went in him and not on his clothes. For supper, well the most fun was to poke the knife in the butter bowl, this didn't really accomplish much eating but it was rather amusing.

John is tucked in bed, sleeping peacefully and storing up energy for all of tomorrows adventures.