Drew's Words

Drew had his two-year check-up with the doc today (a certain Dr. Krista from DePauw, in fact) and besides finding out he is lagging on height a little (only the 40th percentile!), we were told that he should be saying at least twenty words by this point. Brooke and I estimated that Drew says around 40 words -- but, we shall see. I thought I would record them here . . .

Mama, Daddy, Scoutie (our dog), Cat, Train, Helicopter, Airplane, Car, Truck (he's a boy), Ball, Door, Window, Fan, Flag, Bed, Nose, Eyes, Mouth, Eat, Bite, Cow, Duck, Lion, Dog, Bird, Milk, Yogurt, Cheese, Snack, Bar, Light, Drink, Fish, Turtle, Lobster, Bridge, Choo-choo, Moo, Baa, Meow, Quack, Swing, Whee!, No, Balloon, Shirt, Socks, Shoes, Yellow, Red, Blue, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Hand, Foot, Toes, Water, Shower, Boat, Head, Hat, Boots, Teeth, Rain, Dark, Ice, Sun, Snow, Hot, Tree, Hike, Pee, Slide, Hoot-hoot, Ride

Okay, well, that's 78 words -- so, it looks like we were really underestimating him! LOL Oh well -- no high expectations from these parents! And, to be fair, his pronunciation of some of these words leaves a lot to be desired -- helicopter, for example comes out "kel-cop", but, he definitely uses only that word for only a helicopter, so, it counts! :-)

He does not yet put the words together, for the most part. He does okay with possessives -- Mama's nose, Dada's shoes, etc. But, he has yet to figure out that something can be both yellow AND a fish. And, forget proper use of verbs!

We have been assured that by the time he enters school, he will have put it all together just as well as any other kid. Hopefully so!

What If the Worst Happened?

So, we watched Blood Diamond this weekend. I thought it was a good movie and that Leo DiCaprio did a decent job and that Djimon Hounsou was fabulous and Jennifer Connelley played her role of being the woman who soothes savage beasts well.

But, as I watched Djimon's character obsess and risk everything for his son after the terrible tragedy of having his family and home ripped apart at the hands of rebels, I wondered how I would behave in such a situation.

You like to think that you will rise above -- that you have unknown courage within yourself that will help you prevail for your family. But, as I was contemplating what I would do and how I would react, I found myself uncomfortably focused on my personal response to 9-11.

As many of you who actually read my blog know, I lived in Arlington (just across the river from DC) at the time, and I was on my way to work with Brooke driving. Traffic was terrible -- stop and go -- and because Brooke often wanted to listen to sports radio in the morning, I had turned off the radio. So, we knew nothing about New York and were just sitting in this terrible traffic, going past the Pentagon, and the plane flew right over our car and slammed into the Pentagon. The whole car moved -- I was initially so confused that I thought we had somehow been hit by something -- and we could feel the heat from the flames INSIDE the car. Pieces of plane and other debris fell onto our car and all over the road, and the paint on the roofs of the cars in the next lane over had peeled off due to the heat of the plane's engines coming so close to them.

Brooke told me to stay in the car and he got out. I did not want to stay in the car -- things were continuing to blow up and the flames and the heat -- so, I got out of the car and started running across the highway so that I could get away from it all. Brooke stopped me and placed me back in the car. I eventually started crying and traffic finally began to move, so, we drove back home -- at that point, we could not have gotten into DC if we wanted to, because they had shut down all of the bridges into the city from Virginia.

Brooke, who has some military training, was relatively calm about what had happened and called friends and family lucidly and talked through what we had witnessed. But, I freaked out. I really did. I did strange things like go through our pantry and draw up a list of what we needed for an emergency -- I went to the grocery store and bought all sorts of "emergency" stuff like dried milk and purified water and batteries. I filled the bathtubs in our townhouse with water and refused to let them drain for three days afterwards. I slept horribly and kept having visions of the plane and fire and all the rest, over and over and over again.

Eventually -- months and months later -- I was diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, triggered by 9-11. My therapist followed PTSD-treatment techniques and helped me feel much, much better. Instead of physically and emotionally re-experiencing the whole event every time I think about it or talk about it -- it is more of a memory, and I am terribly grateful for that.

But to go back to Blood Diamond, I feel like 9-11 revealed what I would do in a catastrophic situation. I would run away as far as I could, do everything I could to make myself feel safe afterwards, and then I would be haunted by what had happened -- haunted to the point where I would not be able to function rationally. And, I have to say that I am disappointed to realize this about myself. I want to be stronger -- I want to have the emotional fortitude to have my world turned upside down and soldier on anyway. Now, as a mom, I worry that my revealed response is not adequate to protect my children as I should in a catastrophic situation.

Maybe my experience with 9-11 has changed how I would respond -- maybe my tolerance for falling into a PTSD frame of mind has increased. Maybe, now that I am a mom, the strength I lacked previously, is magically there. Maybe having 9-11 happen has shattered my naive illusion that terrible things do not happen to lawyers on their way to work in the morning.

I hope that I never have to find out -- I hope that I never have rebels or enemies or criminals or whomever break into my house and put my life and my children's lives at jeopardy. But, if I do have to find out, I pray that I will have the strength to be there and support and save my children.

Funny Things About Drew

I realized that I have zero posts on Drew. Poor baby! So, I thought I would just post here, for posterity as much as anything else, some funny things he has done.

1. We are now in the "No" stage. He says "No" to everything in a very emphatic voice, even when he does not mean it at all. "No!"

2. Drew loves swings. He can stay on a swing for literally hours. But, he likes to stop periodically and get the rush feeling of that first swing again. He will tell us "More! More!" while he is swinging -- and that is his way of telling us that it is time to stop and let him get that rush again.

3. Drew got into Brooke's wallet the other day, pulled out his debit card and stuck it into the slot on the front of the dishwasher that is meant for heat from the drying cycle to escape. Fortunately, Mommy witnessed this whole event from afar -- and he was pleased as punch that the card fit into the slot and disappeared. Daddy had to take the front off the dishwasher to get the card out again.

4. One of the things that I remark about Drew is that he is (still) a very efficient speaker -- he learns a word, and if it could be applicable to whole lot of different things, then that's good enough -- he does not seem to feel the need to learn additional words, at the moment. For example, he learned "shower" (which he calls "show-show") -- and that applies not just to the shower, but to sprinklers and fountains and the car wash. At least we can see that he is processing things by finding commonalities between them, but, I continue to be amazed by the number of things that can fall into Drew's general categories.

5. Drew has a great sense of humor -- he plays tricks on us and the dog and loves to make us laugh and to laugh himself.

6. My son loves tie-dye. He has two tie-dyed shirts and the boy would wear them constantly if they did not need to be washed. He also loves trains -- he talks about trains constantly -- choo-choo! -- and if tie-dye is not available, then he wants to wear one of his outfits with trains on them.

7. We are so pleased to find that Drew loves reading. He likes to read with us all the time -- as a result, we have read "Walter the Farting Dog", "Thomas and the School Trip", "Click Clack Moo", "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", and "Goodnight Moon" more times than we would like to admit. He will usually choose three or four other books each day to supplement these standards, so we do get some variety in any case. But, he loves to go through the books and point to the pictures and hear the funny voices we have for the characters. It's pretty cool.

8. The other day, Mommy was wearing her big floppy hat to work in the garden (we live in the South now, so, I get to wear a big floppy hat, if I want) and Drew wanted to wear a hat too. He has this adorable baseball cap that Daddy got for him (it says, "What's up, dog?") and so, I squished it over his curls and darned if he did wear that baseball cap for a full day, straight! Such a funny little guy.

9. Oh, and we have definitely been experiencing the terrible twos for some time now. But, we have the many-times-a-day FUN of dealing with Drew's tantrum when we go inside the house. In Drew's perfect world, he would be outside all day long -- stomping in puddles and playing with sticks and dirt and being pushed in a swing. So, anytime -- and I mean ANYTIME -- we go from the outside to the inside, Drew falls on the floor in an absolute fit and cries and cries and cries. If we fail to get his shoes off during this initial fit and take them off later, then that is a separate fit of crying. Brooke and I just say that we will remember this when he spends too much time INSIDE when he's older and will use it to justify kicking him OUTSIDE. :-)

I think that's enough. My little Drew Caleb.