Can You See It Now Dad?

Tonight while John and I were in his room reading books his daddy called while on the road coming home from visiting members in the hospital and so I put Mark on speaker phone so John could hear him too. After John waved 'hi' to him, and signed to him that he loved him, then he started rapidly signing for his daddy to read the book to him and grabbed up the phone and turned it so that daddy could 'see' the book through the phone screen. For probably the next 5 minutes or so it was my job to change the pages and at each change of page John would hold the phone over the new pages, making sure to get it really close to the most interesting parts of the pictures so that his daddy could see.

After that it was time for John and I to start getting supper together, and so my little helper came into the kitchen with me. He supervised while I cut the veggies, helped measure things out, but then he really helped with the sauteing of the veggies for the chicken rice soup.



John helps to scramble eggs almost every morning, so when I asked him to please stir the veggies so that I could get other things done in the kitchen he took the job quite seriously and did a fantastic job at it. I was so impressed. He would pull himself up with the oven handle, stand and stir for a bit, then sit down and watch the pan, when it got really bubbly he would stand up and stir it again. We had perfectly sauteed veggies and I really only intervened a time or two - I am constantly amazed at how much actual help John is.

John has been learning to sign the common table prayer, and I've noticed that since he's started that he's been stringing more signs together and is even making up his own little sentences. Things that he used to have us spell out in books for him he now points to the letters and spells them out for us. He makes sure that his monkey or whichever animal is nearby sees all the pictures in his books, and often uses their hands to sign about what is going on in the book. I sometimes worry that we aren't doing enough formal school, but really he is learning every day and so I guess we are just going to keep doing what we are doing.

One of the things that we like to do is play games, Hi Ho Cherry O is one of John's favorites, and this time it was Raggedy Andy's job to help play.







Tonight for Halloween, or the Great Chocolate Harvest as it is commonly called on the Loopers list, John walked around in the driveway giving out candy to every kid that came by. This is his first time to be home and feeling good for Halloween ever and he really enjoyed getting to see the kids in the costumes and liked giving them candy. Of course he had a great time eating some of it himself! After he had eaten one small Hershey bar he wanted another and I told him that he could have it tomorrow. He started into the house, took one look at his father, and stuffed tomorrow's candy bar inside of his coat, as if to hide it. I don't think we've laughed so hard in a long time.

Walking with one crutch...

...and a bit of help. Who was doing that? Why John of course. The crutch was teeny tiny, and yet way too tall for him, but he immediately understood exactly what to do with it and needed only a little balance help and support on the other side where the other crutch belongs. His new physical therapist wholeheartedly agrees with one of our favorite old pt's who is adamant that John will eventually walk unassisted. For now we are looking forward to next month when he will get to try out a walker that has less support than his gait trainer, then transition eventually to two crutches and who knows when but it sure looks like he will eventually walk free. I cannot adequately describe how exciting that is to us.

I do have pictures and other things to post and will hopefully get myself in here to do it sometime this week. I've been spending every spare moment sewing, sewing, sewing, and John has nice new sheets, pillow cases, bed pads and pj pants to show for it, and still needs some long sleeve pj shirts, play clothes, clothes to go to town in and church clothes too, it's so very cool that everything from last year has high water legs and too short of arms.

Thanks so much for keeping us in your prayers and thoughts, these are amazing days and so much fun to watch.

Ah Vacation

Prior to leaving the guys needed a pre-vacation haircut, as you can tell John has had his and now it was going to be dad's turn, but we couldn't resist a picture before they traded places.

This was the very first time that we got to travel to North Carolina to visit with Mark's family and not have to tour the inside of any hospitals. John did great, he threw up one time on the way there and then had the time of his life. He's still asking about the cousins.



With two days of driving to do he had to find ways to entertain himself in the back seat. He was a cheerful traveler and learned lots of new things like how to throw things from the back seat to the front, how to reach everything in the back seat and move it, open it, pitch it, play with it or eat it. We read lots of books, watched some movies, enjoyed some music and finally made it to Papa's house.







John absolutely loved getting to play with his cousins. He is the second youngest of 12 cousins, the oldest one is 13 and the youngest is 2. He had so much fun racing around in circles with David and would stop in front of him so that David could ram him, boys are certainly boys. He did later come off the porch at a bad angle and take a header on the concrete but it didn't take long and he was back out racing in circles again.

Mark and I had a very enjoyable game of Risk with some of the older cousins, and the girls kicked butt, if we hadn't had to stop the game to go eat I'm sure that Savannah would have taken over the world.

We stayed most of the time with Mark's next older brother and his delightful wife and family. It was so nice to have so much time to visit and get to know them better, and John was so excited to be staying in a house with 6 cousins. He woke up most mornings at 5 or 6, signing to me 'wake-up cousins, wake-up cousins' as fast as his little fingers and hands could sign it. He learned to bump down all the stairs on his bottom and was so excited to play with the kids.

We are always impressed to be around so many kids and so many nice kids at that, it was a pleasure to be in the midst of family.

The reason for the timing of this visit was a close family wedding that Mark was preaching at. The wedding went well, the reception was wild, or rather John was wild at the reception as he seemed to think that he owned the dance floor. He was a bit timid getting out there to start with, but soon was running in circles and figure eights and laughing and smiling and making sure that there wasn't room out there on the dance floor for adults.



One last picture, I could have taken a million but I was too busy having fun too. This is the 3 youngest cousins, all boys, one with more fashion sense than the others, all having a good time.

So many things happened, and so much fun was had it's nearly impossible to list all of it, suffice it to say that we are looking forward to our next visit!

We're Home!

John had a great vacation, so did we, and I'll get pictures and news and everything here pretty soon, maybe even today :)