Picking the highlight of my weekend is tough today. There’s a lot to choose from.
It started out well on Friday afternoon. Our son came home from school and his point-sheet showed that he had a really good day, thus completing his second straight good, safe, incident-free week at school. (With another incident-free day today, Kai will make it to Level 2, and I will be a little anxious until I find out if he makes it.)
Anyway, for doing so well, my wife gave him a Lego Advent calendar. She had planned to give it to him on December 1, but he got it ten days early as a special reward. Up until very recently, Kai was never much for Legos. He had neither the fine motor skills to work with the smaller pieces nor the patience to put them together. This set came with 24 different Lego builds, with the idea that your child would do one on each of the first 24 days of December. But, when Kai saw it, he wanted to work on all of them. I thought he might get frustrated or lose interest after one or two, but he diligently kept working on one after another. He studied each picture carefully, and with only very minimal help from Mom and Dad, he completed all 24 figures. I was truly impressed.
But, that is not the highlight of my weekend.
On Saturday morning, Kai had his ice skating class for kids with special needs. Here, local high school and junior high girls assist the students to skate. Kai has been taking the class for nearly two months now, and was already moving better than I thought he would. I originally thought that just standing up and balancing on the skates would be difficult for him, but it didn’t take long before he was moving along with girls on either side of him holding his hands. This Saturday though, was the first time that one of the girls gave him a hockey stick and let him skate by himself. I was truly amazed as he moved around the rink independently, totally overcoming my skepticism.
But, that is not the highlight of my weekend.
On Saturday afternoon, we went to see a local community theater production of Snoopy! The Musical. It is a sequel to the more famous musical You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. We had gone to a play with Kai once before, and it was embarrassing as he talked loudly and shouted things to the cast right in the middle of the performance. This time, we reminded him of the rules for the theater and hoped for the best. Kai loved the show! He was very excited, but contained his comments to an appropriate level. It was fun to see him clapping and shouting “Wahooo!” at the end of each musical number. And, most importantly, he then quieted down when the applause died down. It was another sign of maturity and progress.
But, that is not the highlight of my weekend.
Yesterday, I popped inside the house after working on cleaning out our gutters. My wife was in the kitchen trying to finish something when I heard Kai call out from the play room. “Mommy, I’m bored!” Yes, that familiar refrain that is the bane of mothers everywhere. Except that we had never heard that before from Kai. I was startled. How wonderful that he was able to express himself like so many other kids! I shook my head and smiled as I went back outside, leaving my wife to deal with Kai’s boredom.
Now that was the highlight of my weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment