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.