Visit With Son Last Monday (Home and Endurance)

I think I got stuck on bubblegum cake.

The first thing that happened actually, was that my son was giggling and so excited to see me, he was hiding around Michelle's legs (I don't know if someone cancelled last minute and she was in charge or what that day). But he was very happy to see me and then fell over and hit his head on the door. So he didn't cry, but was quiet and it hurt and I picked him up and he just wanted me to hold him so I did. But he didn't want me to sit down in the rocking chair, he wanted me to stand with him. So I stood, holding him, and he had his face close to mine for a long time and just hugged me around the neck.

Then he said something about gum cake but when I asked again he wouldn't say it again so who knows, maybe he said rum cake. I think it was gum.

I'm going to fill this in more, using my notes, in a little while.

But basically he wanted to use the animals again and we took them to the bubblegum planet and then ...(distracted by Usher song...he can DANCE. Wow. it's some Daddy song. Daddy's Home. The dancing is really good--I'll delete this or put it in another post later).

So they went to the bubblegum planet and then later they were buying toilets for the toilet planet which is actually the space station in outerspace, where everyone can use the restroom. Then we made sculptures of cars with playdough and also played with the cars with all the animals standing by watching. My son found a foot but we didn't know where the guy was, for the magnet and it was to the cowboy magnet which I found later. One of the first things we did was that he wanted the caterpillar to attack me again so he did and "sniffed" me out so then this went into talking about search and rescue dogs and how they sniff things out and do tracking and he loved this idea so I had the caterpillar and the chickie and the monkey (subbing for dog) going to track. caterpillar was too slow so got a ride with dog and it was for a missing person and then Oliver said if it was too slow, take the train!

So I set up the chairs into a line for a train and Oliver looked surprised and really happy. A real imaginary train! So I asked where he wanted to sit and he said in the front and he was going to drive so I sat with the animals on my lap behind him.

He drove the train and made chugging noises. Really cute. Then we were there for the search and rescue and found a shoe track and then I said something about where are the tracks going and where should we look and Oliver said, "Tracks!" and pointed to the ground and said, "train tracks". I laughed and said yes, I could see some train tracks and we'd take these and stay out of the mud and we'd find the train! and the conductor of the train! and he said yes and became the conductor with his pretend hat. He had so much fun.

Then we were playing at the table with the playdough and with the cars and I followed him with the car and we drove around and then had a picnic. We went to the picnic blanket and before that he started saying, when I said where do you want to go? he said "I want to go home with you." and then kept saying it over and over, that he wanted to go to my house, to mama's house, but he had his car saying this to my car. He said he wanted to live with me.

Then we played more and went to the park with the cars and animals and went down the slide as cars tagging onto eachother, and did a lot of things and then it was time to make his calendar.

I showed him a Norman Rockwell calendar I had with me, to show him the idea of a whole month and instead of noticing the month, he noticed the painting of a babysitter with a baby. He was very interested and wanted to keep it. He said it was of a mama with her baby. He said, "Why is the mama mad at the baby?" and I said she wasn't mad, she was just frustrated because she was trying to figure out why the baby was crying and wanted to know how to fix it. So she was going to a book to try to find out what to do. He nodded and really wanted to keep it. I read the caption on the bottom out loud to him, it was something like "Endure through the difficulties in life." I am pretty sure that was the exact saying and it was at the bottom of the calendar. It was for the month of March.

He left, blowing kisses and big hugs. He seemed to be in very good spirits that day and I explained to him that I'd see him on Friday.