- There are two freckles on your right leg. You named one dot “Fred” and the other dot “Freckle.”
- You have adopted River’s “night-night” way of tracking time. You still have no real concept of “today” or “tomorrow,” but we do seem to be making progress on the days of the week. I have explained that breakfast is in the morning and lunch in the afternoon and dinner at night (so many times!) and you still confuse meals.
- Sometimes you blame your body parts to deflect attention from yourself. “Hand did it,” you’ll explain to me, as if your hand isn’t attached or a part of you at all.
- You sing a little song to your father that makes him laugh. The tune is nothing I can type - just a soft, quiet “do-do, do, do, do-do…” (I hope I don’t forget it...!)
- You are allowed to pick a book to read before nap, but lately you’ve been prone to changing your mind. So I explained to you one day that words have real meaning and that you should think very carefully before you talk. After a lot of back in forth, I told you that it was time choose: you could pick this book to read, which was in my hand, or nothing. Without a moment of hesitation you declared, “Nothing!” That meant, of course, you were going to bed without reading and upon that realization, you became upset. “Patrick, you take a moment to collect yourself,” I told you calmly and walked out of your room. (It didn’t matter to me if you were angry or asleep over nap time as long as you were in your room.) But I wasn’t gone more than 2 mins when you called out, “Mama, I’ve collected myself now.” And then you asked to read the book. “No,” I said. “You made that decision already. Remember - words have meaning.” You sighed heavily and climbed into bed. With your head on the pillow, not even looking at me, you said very thoughtfully - almost to yourself, “Mama...sometime I talk before I think, but I’m working on that. I’m really working on that.” (In the dark, I could have been talking to a forty year old man.) After kissing you goodnight, I called your Dad and Pop right away to tell them about this exchange. You are wise beyond your years.
- You love mint chocolate chip ice cream. You eat a small bowl every night as we watch Curious George before bed.
- You pretend the metal steamer is a spaceship and fly it around the house. One afternoon, you said “Oh, its too small - I can’t fit in there.” So I told you to just pretend you were small enough to be inside the spaceship strainer, to which you replied, “I can’t, Mama. I left my imagination at school.”
- You love learning about inside the body - you ask to see pictures of bones and blood cells and germs. I brought you home a medical illustration book from the office and you poured over it, muttering “oooh” and “that’s complicated” to yourself.
- Around 11:00pm on the evening of 9/11 when you should’ve been sleeping, I heard you cry softly over the monitor. I went into your room to check on you and your cheeks were wet with tears. I asked you what was wrong. “I can’t...I can’t...I can’t control my blood” you told me with such sadness. Trying not to laugh, I explained that the wonderful thing about our heart is that it is so smart and it controls and moves our blood inside our body all by itself. It seemed to reassure you enough to go back to sleep.
- On the morning of Wednesday 9/17 as I was dropping you off at school, your teacher Mrs Betsy told me that you listen very well. She offered this observation all on her own, and said we must work with you at home. Betsy said that sometimes none of the other kids in the class look up (much less make eye contact) when she talks, but you do regularly. Listening - true focused listening - is a really important skill to have, and I’m very happy that we can help you practice now. I hope you will have an easier time understanding, comprehending, following through when you are older -- not to mention making the people you’re talking to feel heard, which is a gift in itself. I’m proud of you.
- Your fourth birthday was defined by Home Depot, your own personal P-Byrd logo and a transformer costume that you only take off long enough to cool down, and then ask for help becoming “Bumblebee” again.
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