Taking it Easy

A started his summer school on Monday last week. He has a new teacher for the month-long summer session, and is slacking big time. I had to send a note in to his teacher to let him know that he could read quite well, and write some things too. A doesn't like to do the writing much because it's difficult for him, but we're getting there.

When he's motivated, he has started to write things down to tell us. For example, the other day when it was 105 actual temperature, with a heat index of 112, A went up to his sister's coloring tablet and wrote "hot", got his dad's attention, and pointed to it. We're thrilled and are hoping that his developing writing and reading skills will open a window to some communication that has been nonexistent up to this point. He routinely writes his first and last names using pencils without the pencil grip. We've graduated! Woo hoo! He also spells things using the letter magnets on the side of the fridge.

In other news, he's a bean pole. Tall and skinny boy, he can wear 6/7's if only we could find a belt small enough to keep them on his butt. Lengthwise it's no problem. He just turned 5 1/2.

School is only a half day in the summer, so A is enjoying playing with his sister both in the house and in our little inflatable pool that resides just off the back porch. A absolutely loves the water and will go completely underwater with no issues, strange given some of his sensory issues. K is also a little fish and likes to hold her breath and walk on her hands from one end of the ten-foot pool to the other. I also watch her like a hawk.

My birthday was yesterday, so I got a couple of gift cards to go purchase some veggies and flowers and plant them after all. It's probably too late, but we'll give it a whirl. This part of Texas has a long growing season, so we'll see what happens. I have a container garden in the back yard consisting of a single tomato plant, two bell peppers, and some herbs including cilantro (which I could bathe in), sweet basil (which I could also bathe in), flat leaf Italian parsley, and some rosemary. I also bought some flowers for the front neglected bed.

My husband gave me a beautiful gift last night of digging up the whole thing. It would appear that nothing has ever been planted in the bed since the house was built 7 years ago, judging from the depth of the grass roots and the rock-hard quality of the soil. Bless his heart, I think that's the most expensive gift he's ever given me. It comes at a cost; Z has 3 slipped disks and 2 ruptured ones that he just lives with. The doctor won't do surgery for him yet because of his degenerative back disease -- once he starts with the surgery, he'll have to have it every 5 years or so for the rest of his life, and they want to prolong the initial surgery as long as possible.

Z just smiled at me when I ran out the front door last night. I didn't realize he was out there until he'd done the entire thing, and he said that he was going to keep doing things as long as he could. It will hurt regardless, so he's just going to do what he can do. *sigh* I love him to pieces, but it makes me cry when he does stuff like this.

Today we had a beautiful, glorious, wonderful cold front move through and instead of the 104 we had yesterday, we had highs in the 70's most of the day until this evening when it creeped up into the lower 80's. Yeeeeeesssss. I planted the entire front bed this afternoon. Then started a light, gentle rain -- perfect for the new babies in their new home. I hit the "clearance section" at the nursery and have 9 zinnias in a range of colors, an orange and red Pride of Barbados, 4 red salvia, 2 white-blooming sage, 4 brown-eyed susans, 2 purple coneflowers, 23 dark red gladiolus, 3 landscape gerbera daisies in "watermelon, pineapple, and coconut", and 3 day lilies in a deep wine color with yellow throats. And I also scored a huge red geranium in a pot that is now gracing my front porch. Wheeeee! I'm looking for some of those trailing petunias for a couple of hanging baskets, but am having a difficult time finding any this year. Two stores have had ZERO available since we got here; I'm wondering if there's some sort of disaster in the petunia industry or something this year.

My kids helped to decorate my cake yesterday. Z made a chocolate cake from scratch and then let the kids go to town using their choice of decorations. And they did go to town. I had a truly one-of-a-kind creation: broken up Oreo cookies; sugar nonpareil Santa Claus heads leftover from a Christmas cupcake project; coconut; and red and green sugar sprinkles were dumped liberally across the entire surface. I thought I'd need an insulin shot from just looking at it. And I'm not diabetic.

But it was good, and the kiddos were thrilled with it and had a ball putting everything on there. And all was right with the world.

Another odd bit of news that's relieving in a way: Z's growing mass in his chest has tripled in size since last week. This means there is a huge probability it's got liquid in it and it's a cyst, rather than something tumorous and nasty -- which is infinitely relieving in its own way. We still don't know what it is, won't until next week sometime, but at least there's a really good chance it's not an ugly kind of cancer.