Visit With My Son

Today Michelle was monitoring the visit with my son. My son stalled again, not wanting to leave the visit. It wasn't too bad today, but he did try to stall and stay with me more.

I brought pistacios and some other things for snacks but all he wanted was the juice and then to take everything that I brought, with him. It doesn't matter what I bring, if it's from Mama, he wants to take it with him. So he took the whole bag of pistacios, along with the other things.

We got in and he wanted to play at the control station of this ship and I played with this "man" and he had "the robot" and we made believe. He said we were visiting the dinosaur and pointed out where the dinosaur would be, and then he said there was a dragon too, a friendly dragon. We played with these things for a long time. Then he started talking and just telling me what was going on in his life. I gave him a piece of gum and he told me all about strawberry shortcake and some strawberry gum he had wanted and I guess there was some confusion at his daycare over who got gum and where it went.

He brough up, on his own, his owie, and showed me where his fingers were healing, and then he said his eyes both itched and hurt and he rubbed them a lot but wasn't just pulling at one in particular. I noticed white marks have appeared in his nails, his fingernails, just a couple, and I don't know if it's from a vitamin deficiency or something else. He said something about blood on his gums and I couldn't tell for sure if he was saying he'd had blood on his gums or if he was talking about "Nessie". He talked animatedly but I really feel he needs to be in preschool.

He is able to copy anything I say and I just wonder why he's not saying as much in complete sentences.

Then he wanted to read and the first book he wanted was one about school. He was really happy to point out different things in the book. He also told me he had been playing outside and making "tracks" in the snow. :) He's still into "tracks" and was wearing a John Deere tractor shirt that he was really proud of, because, I think, it has a tractor and it also said something about "tracks". It said, "Big tires make big tracks" or something like that. He sure loves tractors and John Deere. When he was still with me, I took him out to see the tractors all the time and he loved watching them in motion and then I also took him to a tractor and construction machinary shop too and he loved it. It was a big John Deere store and it was right across from our house then.

Then he wanted to read a Dr. Suess book and he was really into pretending like he was at school and I was the teacher. So he sat in a little chair and watched me as I read, facing him in another chair. Then when he chose the story "Runaway Bunny" I asked him if he wanted to sit on my lap, as he usually does. He usually sits in my lap was into the idea of school today. The print and photos were so small I encouraged him to sit in my lap so he could see better because he was rubbing his eyes and Michelle did make note of this and didn't have a problem with it at all. She just made a simple note. Of course, I'm sure she'd heard about my "dream" where she and I were "partying" and was probably slightly amused (or amused to no end, no doubt) but she and I just did our own thing--she took notes and I just played with my son.

As for Michelle, she and I didn't exchange words at all but I was also impressed with how she held someone off from interrupting our visit today. Someone was there to take photos of the room and came in during the visit and Micehlle asked them to come back later if they could wait and I thought she handled it in a very professional manner, to minimize distraction.

So anyway, as soon as I said sometimes you could sit on someone's lap even in school, he happily sat down and I read the Margaret Wise Brown book to him and he got the sweetest little smile on his face and asked me to read it again.

He wanted the school book read twice, a book about puppy's once, a Berenstein Bear's book "Santa Bear", the Dr. Suess book, and then he wanted "The Runaway Bunny" twice. Then finally, one about Simba from The Lion King, three times. He was really into the little bunny one and pointed out the mother blowing her little one back and he liked the one where the mother is walking a tightrope to get to her little one. These two scenes were his favorites. It was really cute to read the bunny one to him because of this sweet little smile he had on his face as I read.

We also played with playdough. He said he wanted to make "a robot" so we set about making a robot with playdough. I showed him too, how different colors will make another color. I took a piece of blue and a piece of yellow and blended them to make green and he was really into this. He watched and silently mouthed the colors and directions to commit to his own memory. He was really into learning how to blend colors and thought this was fascinating. So I tried to make a robot sort of unsuccessfully. So then I made a dog and it did look like a dog. He was cutting it up, the playdough, in the crocodile's mouth and watching to see how it worked. So instead of having him cut up a "dog" (even though it's just playdough and he didn't think about it) I made a tree for him to cut into firewood. I think it was more for me than him, but I thought it would be better to "cut" something that is commonly cut as I felt a little weird about a dog getting cut up. Call me a nut, but I had to make a tree instead. So he cut the whole tree into "firewood" and we then made a pretend bonfire. I said, "Do you want to warm your hands by the fire?" and he leaned back and said seriously, "No, it's hot!" Then he said, "We'll make hot dogs and marshmallows" and I said yes and we had the crocodile eating hot dogs and marshmallows.

It was realy cute. He talked about his cars today, Mater and "the doctor" and was really into telling me about this and also told me he'd watched some Bible movies and one with Madagascar.

I can't remember which movie madagascar is from. But he wanted to share with me today and it was nice. He used a lot of words to try to fill me in and looked me in the eye as he talked, and nodded.

Oh, just looked it up. There's a movie called "Madagascar". That must be it! Or one of them, because I guess there is a series.