Bedtime Revelations

Callia loves to talk and no one who has ever met her could argue that. I have people laugh and comment on it randomly all the time because she walks up to them and has candid conversations with them on the spot, having never met them before. I love to see that confidence in her and am so glad it's back since beginning to homeschool her last month. :)

At bedtime she often likes to talk to me about deep issues that she has been thinking about and I cherish the time I get to talk to her about what is on her heart. This evening we had a particularly wonderful conversation that I simply cannot resist writing about. :)

To set the scene, I broke the news to her earlier this afternoon that the man who lived at the opposite end of our block on our street had passed away. He was an older black man (although not very old, in poor health) who would always come out of his duplex and sit on his step to watch me wait for the bus to drop Callia off in the afternoon. Mom tried to tell me that he was just always out there but I believe he purposefully sat there so he could have a moment to watch Thad's excitement over the bus and to ask Callia how her day at school went. He was always extremely thrilled over both of them. :) He never went anywhere and Callia often made comments to me (not to him) about his nasty toenails. She was always disappointed if he was not there and told me so, and at one point she commented on how she missed him coming out and wondered why he hadn't been there in a while. I thought it was because the weather was getting colder and told her so. A few weeks later there was a wreath wrapped in plastic on his doorstep (December) and the other girl who waited for kids to get off the same bus at that corner told me that his family member had come by to check on him and found he had passed. I didn't tell Callia until today; I had just let her continue to assume it was because of the cold weather--I didn't know if she really needed to understand death yet. But now that my grandmother's cancer may be back I have been going ahead with breaking her into an understanding of the concept.

Today we went for a walk because the weather was so beautiful, and Nathan and Thaddeus had gone ahead to the house because Callia was being so slow because of a skinned knee and Daddy needed to go potty. :) Callia and I went ahead and took our time walking back carrying litter (to clean up our beautiful world), and she commented as we passed the duplex the man lived in that we wouldn't want to pick up the flag in his yard and throw it away because he would want it to stay there. I told her that I thought someone else lived there now. In the past she would have said "Oh, really?", but this time she said "Why? What makes you think that?" She wouldn't take "I just think so" for an answer so I had to tell her. She was very sad and said she loved talking to him and really liked him so much and that it made her sad and then went on her way.

So at bedtime I brought it up again to see how she was feeling about it. During prayer I said "...and dear God please take care of the man who used to live at the end of our street now that he is in heaven with you" (although I don't know if he was a Christian or not). She continued (which is a new thing that we do--praying at the same time back and forth between the two of us) "and thank you (I wish I could remember exactly what she said about him)".

The prayer went really well and then she wanted to talk about heaven and the streets of gold. In the end of the conversation she was laughing and saying that she wishes she could die now and go see the man at the end of the street in his beautiful new body that will never get old, and see the streets of gold and see God there. She asked if we would have houses in heaven and I told her that Jesus said "In my father's house are many mansions. I am going to prepare a place for you", and she was so excited about that. She talked about how wonderful the houses will probably be and "Maybe there will be golden streets in the houses, too! Noooo! I don't think sooo! Hehehe!" I responded "I bet there will be all kinds of wonderful places for us to worship God while we are there" and she said "but why would we worship God if we are already there with him?" and I said "because he is so wonderful that we will want to tell him so", and I watched a look of complete inspiration come across her face. I told her "That's why Mommy likes to go to church in time to sing (we seldom make it on time and last week she commented about how she hates getting there in time to sing), because I like to sing to God and worship Him. He can hear us from heaven and sometimes it is almost like being there with Him". She was so excited about that and wanted to sing worship songs with me "Like the ones you used to sing at your church when you were a little girl". So we sang "Oh Lord, you're beautiful, your face is all I see, and when your eyes are on this child, your grace abounds to me", and then "Jesus, name above all names, beautiful savior, glorious lord, Emmanuel, God is with us, blessed Redeemer, living Word", and then "I wish I could remember the third song we sang!" She was lifting her hands (she loves the drama!) and she was so genuinely joyful to be praising the Lord.

I praise God right now for giving me such a wonderful daughter and a chance to have such a great time with her. :D

Pointing and Grunting=PBJ?

As we already know, Thaddeus is a pretty funny little guy. Its Christmas break and Callia is at Mom's house so Nathan, Thad, and I were sitting here in the living room eating cereal. Thad decided he didn't want his cereal, and a few minutes later came up to Nathan rubbing his tummy and saying "pweese". Nathan figured he wanted something so he stood up and Thad led him into the kitchen to the cabinet where we keep most of the snacks and canned food. Nathan picked him up so he could point to what he wanted, and Thad tapped the top of the peanut butter jar. So Nathan sat Thad down on the step stool that seems to stay in the middle of the kitchen and picked up the peanut butter and called in to tell me Thad was wanting peanut butter. Thaddeus then pointed at the bread which sits in a bowl on the counter. Haha! He came into the living room with his PBJ on a plate a couple of minutes later with a laughing Daddy trailing behind. Thaddeus set it down on the floor and pointed to it and chirped "duh!" to show me his success in communicating to his father what he wanted. :)

Thad's Words

I thought I'd take a minute to make a list of the words that Thaddeus says. He doesn't really say much and prefers using gestures and voice inflection to his little sounds to get his point across. Actual words that he says, preceded by the way that he pronounces them:

"bah" = bye
"hey" = hey
"mama" = mommy, daddy, auntie, memaw
"djuece" = juice
"koo keh" = cookie
"ka kuh" = cracker
"kah" = car
"mow" = more

He also says animals sounds for a cow "moo", sheep "baa", dog "wuh wuh" (his version of a dog barking), and an in and out "f" sound which he believes is made by a bunny since that is what we taught him :).

He also uses sign language to say cat and please, always with a big proud smile.

He has said other words once or twice without putting them into use and we do not hear them anymore or only did once:

"yaya" = Callia (not anymore)
"mayma" = Memaw (not anymore)
"dada" = daddy (not anymore)
"eeee" = horse neighing (once)
"uh yuh" = I love you (once)

I am trying to teach him more signs and please is a new one that I require him to say in order to get something he wants, just to get him to use some type of language. I don't know if he has more words than I know of and that I just can't understand them, but I doubt it because most of his noises sound like "uh duh" and another one I can't think of right now. He uses various tones that really do say a lot, like he is singing the way he feels. Fits are becoming very frequent as he has more complex thoughts that he cannot express and he gets angry with me for not understanding his gestures and sounds, especially when he wants something specific. I'm trying to figure out how I can learn more signs myself because I really don't know that many relative to how many words I use when I talk to him, and he seems to have less aversion to signing things than saying them.

Pictures

Sho...for anyone who ish intereshted, I have added and backdated a bunch of pictures for July-September.

Busy Man

Thaddeus makes us all laugh when he plays because he seems so serious and purposeful about what he is doing.

He was playing with blocks here yesterday after his nap while Sarah and Julie were over, and was moving them around in the little wagon that they are kept in. There were two blocks missing so two holes, and he was moving blocks from full spaces to empty ones, over and over and over, essentially rearranging them endlessly while we were talking. Eventually Sarah pointed out that although he was doing almost nothing, he felt it was something significant and at one point when the blocks looked no different to us, he clasped his hands in delight and when Sarah congratulated him he bashfully scrunched up his shoulders, covered his face with his clasped hands and grinned!

This type of play is very typical for him and he will, for instance, get tupperware out of the pantry and use it to carry blocks around. He'll put blocks or other items from one container to the next, endlessly rearranging them, and carrying them to different locations in the house, such as from the living room carpet to the bottom step in the foyer and back again on various trays and in buckets. Every little movement is so purposeful and his face is so dead panned serious. He will not be interrupted except to be congratulated and sometimes not even them. If I try to talk to him he just brushes past as if he's too busy for such things.

What a funny silly little guy. I think he is absolutely delightful.

Not Again

Callia is still not feeling great about pictures.

Silliness