The Never Normal

Boo was so very sweet and funny today.  His only real transgressions were screeching in my face and trying to cop a feel.  There is a code language he sometimes half-sings to himself as he moves in for the squeeze, some syllabic elven tongue.   Other times it’s just “boobie.”  You’d think I nursed the kid until he was 6. It’s hard to stress about having to remind him, even over and over, hands to yourself, when he could instead be trying to pull my hair out or smearing shit on my mom in the backseat.   You pick your battles.

I brought him new soft rugs, a cuddle animal-pillow, a sensory ball, and some playdoh and a beanbag toss game for his peeps.  The kids are back in the original house, which is now big and bright and new.  Jonah has his own room (not out of some kind of preferential treatment or luck; he’d attack a room-mate) overlooking the playground and the pool.  At the playground, any playground, Jonah must have the first swing.  Sometimes it is the first swing on the left and sometimes it is the first swing on the right, but he has to have that first swing.  We have been exceedingly lucky in finding parks with empty swings, or with kids who see him coming and get up & away before his arrival.

What a great visit today.  Boo was happy, laughing and going through his litany of requests – things he knows by now he’s bound to get but likes the sounds lilting off his tongue anyway:  celwee?  blue cheese? riv-ah?  bath?

I will see him again soon, on Monday morning at 6am when he is driven up for his laser eye surgery.  It does not, the surgeon tells me, require “opening his eye,” which I guess is a good thing.  Still and all they are going to put him under and I hate that part, gowning up and keeping him calm while they put the mask over his face.  Not that I’d ever not do it.

This will be the third eye surgery.  There’s something creepy about watching your child go the kind of limp that isn’t sleep.  Of course I am grateful for this surgeon and his skill, for all the people working together to help Jonah.  I trust he will be fine.  I just don’t want him to have to go through it.

…playing it cool – feeling the breeze, ducking & rocking to the music he’s requested, playing with grandma, who’s just a little reticent (can’t blame her), then feeling the breeze and playing it cool once again.

I hope tomorrow stretches out long and lazy.  I need one long and lazy day.