Be A Good Dad

Geetle and Pookie have really stepped up their independent reading recently. Geetle is constantly reading books out loud. The other day, BeAGoodMom, Giggles and I sat on our bed while Pookie read a couple Dr. Seuss books to us while pointing at each word. At the same time, Geetle was in her bed reading her own books out loud.

Also, recently, I was reading a bedtime book with Pookie on a night he asked to go to bed early. While reading the book I kept asking him questions like, “How many fish are there?” and “What color dress is the girl wearing?” without pointing at the pictures. He kept getting them right.

The question that he answered that impressed me the most, though, went something like, “What color car is the yellow bird driving?” He had been doing so well that I decided to push him a little bit. I completely expected him to quickly say yellow just as an echolalic response. Instead, he correctly answered blue and touched the blue car.

Just another one of those little differences that we are noticing recently that really highlight just how much he has changed over the last few months.

I end up spending a fair amount of time alone with Pookie. Whenever BeAGoodMom leaves the house on errands, Geetle loves to go. Pookie often doesn’t want to go so the two of us (or 3 depending on what Giggles is up to) get to spend time together at home. Plus, during Kyuki-Do class twice a week, I spend a lot of time working one on one with Pookie.

Taking Geetle to the football game a few weeks back was awesome because we got to spend the entire day together, just the two of us. The trip reminded me of going somewhere with my sister. I whole lot of talking about a million different constantly changing things…and frequent bathroom breaks.

A couple weeks ago I signed Geetle up for a special one night park district class just for me and her. The class is this Friday. She is going to LOVE it.

I’m not going to tell you what the class is, though, because Geetle is going to use something from the class when we visit my parents this weekend and I want Geetle’s new thing to be a surprise. Instead I’ll leave you with the same question I asked Geetle when she asked where we were going.

“How do you keep a turkey in suspense?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you on Friday.” [but I won't tell the rest of you turkeys until this weekend or early next week].

Geetle (I finally got her name right in a post), Pookie and I are still going to Kyuki-Do classes twice a week. Geetle is getting ready to test for her next belt at the end of October. We’re still waiting to see if Pookie is going to be ready or not. I think on the right day he would be fine and on the wrong he would not. But there is still a month to go.

During the last class, one of the instructors made a huge push to get me to ignore Pookie while he tried to work with him. It had mixed results but two things were definitely true. I was able to get more out of the class personally. Pookie definitely responded reasonably well to the instructors and was able to get more from them (as opposed to constantly being told what to do by me).

I came home very excited that they are starting to get comfortable enough with Pookie in the room to start trying their own things with him. After all, most of the reason we signed up was so that Pookie would have another group of people that he needed to follow instructions from.

Then last night, we were wandering the mall looking for new winter coats. That same Kyuki-Do teacher was working at one of the kiosks at the mall trying to find new people to get to visit the class. While talking to him, we learned that one of their sister branches has a class specifically designed for special needs kids. They are a couple hours from our house but the teacher said that he was trying to schedule a time for him to go visit so he could see the differences in how they run that class compared to the other classes because he wants to start trying some things with Pookie.

Then he started telling us that he has been reading up on echolalia and started talking about what he has found out. The conversation got chopped at that point when the kids started wandering (they were getting hungry for snack time).

I have been a big fan of the three instructors all along. I think they do a great job of designing a class appropriate for kids and adults and have done a great job of understanding that Pookie is going to need to be taught a little differently than the other kids. But to find out that they are actually doing research on their own time to help Pookie is just amazing.

But I’ve found over the years that the amount of people willing to do these little things that are going to help Pookie so much over the years are greater than the people that won’t.

I was standing in front of the vending machine the other day trying to decide between chips or candy bars. Such important decisions confront me daily when I have to go into the office.

The didn’t have Hershey’s bars so I was leaning toward chips. One of them was a bag of Cheddar flavored chips. I love cheddar flavored chips on the rare occasions that I eat non-Cheetos chips. Then I noticed that the chips were not just cheddar flavored. They were cheddar baked potato. I said gross and bought a candy bar instead.

As I was walking back to my desk, I realized that all potato chips are basically baked potato flavored since they are made from potatoes.

Then I realized that every time Giggles may not be so strange to constantly be telling us that some food she has never tasted is gross.

And then I realized that I’m basically as mature as a 5-year old with the added benefit of my parents not being able to tell me what I have to eat anymore.

Giggles has learned a couple new tricks over the last few days. If she has a stationary item in front of her that is taller than 1 foot, she will pull herself up to her feet. She has also started some basic cruising. If she is next to two such objects she will move her hands from one to the other.

And yesterday, I was home alone with Giggles and Pookie. Pookie was drawing approximately 1000 pictures. Giggles was crawling around the basement chewing on toys. She ended up by the stairs and climbed the first one. I rushed over behind her and watched her crawl all the way up the stairs. She did it twice for me and then once for BeAGoodMom when she got home. I have a feeling she is a bit like a kitten right now. She’s good at getting up but I don’t think she will be ready to think about coming down for a little while.

She is also getting dangerously close to being able to stand on her own without holding on to anything. Instead of just collapsing, she has started to try and keep her balance and has managed a few times where she stayed up for a couple seconds.