Day 28

Man, I would have never admitted how dependent I am on the darn computer, but I am! We had a lightening strike on Wednesday (Day 25) and our Comcast went completely out - no landline phone, no cable, no internet! Thank goodness we have the cellphone on AT&T!

Poor Josh, he was sitting on the pot when the thunder clap and lightening strike hit, and I was stepping out of the shower! It was soooo loud, he jumped up off the pot, hands over his ears, and ran into his bedroom "to hide." The rest of his day that day was off, understandably so, but not as difficult as Tuesday had been at school and camp. Thursday (Day 26), there was a change in the morning bus - different driver, different style of bus, different kids. Not sure why, but I think it had to do with a couple of the other kids pulling out of summer school or something (just a guess). Josh did great, though, getting on and off the bus, and had a great day at both school and camp. He is just breezing through the schoolwork, including spotting sightwords in some reading materials. They do what's called "News2You" - it's current events stories using words and PECS. Once the stories are read, there are work pages relating to the stories and determining the kids' comprehension. I like reading the stories when he brings them home! He did great with the sightwords, underlining all of them throughout a multi-page article. He also has been doing time-telling, money work, and the like. His camp counselor wrote that he had such fun at camp, she winds up running all over the building with him, searching out the vacuums! Josh has a new game with the afternoon camp van driver - they play "volleydog" with Josh's stuffed "grad dog." That poor thing, gets volleyed over the van, into the street, wherever! But, Nicole and Erin (the driver and aide) have such fun playing with Josh and getting him laughing - they just love hearing him with his belly-laughs and watching his face! :-)

We went to Gramma and Boompah's for dinner after camp on Thursday - absolutely no problems getting out of the car, into their house, and even going to pee. Josh had to take their vacuum out, of course, and ate a huge dinner - roast pork, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, red cabbage! Yum!! Absolutely no problems or hesitation getting into the house when we got home. We were both pretty tired so we both just went up to bed.

Yesterday, Day 27, Francis was here to kidsit in the a.m. until after lunch. Francis is great, relates incredibly well to Josh, but tends to feed him too much! I had left a morning snack out for him, with a couple of drink cups made up (one for snack, one for lunch), and then she was going to give him lunch (PBJ, of course!). When I got home, she said he had both of the drink cups plus another one (I'm thinkin' two more!), and she gave him the snack I left plus another, and then lunch and a cookie! Josh also knows that, even though there are tons of toys around and there's always the outdoors, she's content with sitting and talking with him. Talking is good, but I wish she could/would get him up and moving while talking! When I got home, I had office work to do so he sat around even more (yuck!), and then the lawn had to be mowed before the rain came again! We had a camp-out again last night - put the sleeping bags out, brought a blanket down for Josh, pillows, and I went to make popcorn (around 8:30 or so). By the time the popcorn was done in the microwave, he was almost asleep on the sleeping bags - hogging up both of them!! LOL! So, I just put a movie in for me (since the cable was still out!) and got to watch Forrest Gump - haven't seen that in so long. Josh watched the movie some at the beginning and really liked seeing Forrest walking with the braces on his legs, and then break free of them. He fell back to sleep, completely, before any of the scenes he probably shouldn't see yet, but, like the movie Radio, there were so many similarities with Josh, I spent quite a bit of time weeping. After that movie, I put in Best in Show, but fell asleep myself. Since Josh was hogging up the sleeping bags, I slept on the couch (aawww...). Unfortunately, storms hit again around 1:30 or so - thunder, lots of lightening, lots of rain. The rain on the skylights in the family room is very loud, and we obviously could see all the lightening that way also. So, neither one of us got a very good night's sleep. I think we're in for more rain today/tonight/tomorrow. The mosquitos, as a result of the rain, are horrible, so we're spending a lot of time inside playing, out on the sunporch, and just hangin'.

So, today is Day 28. The Comcast guy has come, finally, and fixed our systems. Seems the lightening strike fried a splitter, or something like that, and he replaced it along with the cable box from upstairs. He did something with the modem and router, and now everything is working just jim-dandy. The landline phone is even working better than it had been before the lightening, and, because the splitter problem is common and their fault (as the guy said), we're getting 90 days of free HBO - whoo hoo!

Josh is having peeing issues today, had some a little bit yesterday as well. He's fine first thing in the a.m., he's fine going at school, fine in the evening when going to bed, but it's that in-between time that he just doesn't want to go in the bathroom. It had been better before we ran out of the NV, so I'm hoping since this is the week after getting back on it, that things will get better in a couple of days again.

Josh seems to be paying a lot more attention to things - he always did, and he would notice things around him all the time - but now he's making connections between what he is seeing and other things - making comparisons. But, what I am noticing is that he is almost holding his breath when he is talking, so the words are not coming out as well. It's like he's got so much to say, that he gets "caught up." I have to keep reminding him to "breath while you're talking," "take a breath," etc. He was telling me something last night about Francis and mowing the lawn and going to her house next Friday and, yeesh, about four other things, in one really long run-on sentence/paragraph! (He is intent on going to Francis' house next Friday rather than her coming her - don't know if they talked about that yesterday, I'm not sure, but he sure is talking about it it a lot with me! - she's got an older dog that Josh might just drive crazy!) Then he was comparing Francis' mowing the lawn to me mowing the lawn, and her garbage company with ours, and so on. He's watching a movie right now - The Trains of Galesburg - and he's just doing almost a running commentary on it, and throwing in comparisons to trains that we've seen recently in Hinsdale and Elmhurst, and looking for the various trains he's seeing in the movie in his train magazines.

Josh has always been a good eater, and will eat anything (as long as there's applesauce with it) except grapefruit, pretty much. But last night we had "halibut presents" (halibut, veggies, onions, and a few potato slices wrapped up in foil packages with spices and cooked in the oven) - first time he's had halibut, I think - and he just gobbled it up! I'm glad he's a fish lover - we've had all types of fish now, although he's not as crazy about seafood - and loves chicken, turkey, and pork. We don't do a lot of beef, and, in fact, many of our meals are vegetarian. Don't know why I brought this up except I was surprised at how well he liked the halibut!

So, we'll see how the rest of today goes with both of us being tuckered. It's only 10:30-ish and, personally, I'm ready for a snooze! Gramma and Boompah are coming tomorrow to hang out. The sun is out now, although it's pretty dang hot, so if we both don't just crash, we'll try to get out for a walk or something. I'd take him over to the beach but it was soooo crowded yesterday, if today is anything like yesterday, we wouldn't even be able to park! Maybe the sprinkler or squirt gun he got for his birthday.... Sure is nice to have the internet back!!