Andy & Jessica

He said to me: “Your singing is not the best, but not the worst.” (Nice to know it could be worse. Ha! This actually makes me think Jude may be gifted musically since I think that is a pretty accurate assessment.)

Today we are grieving the loss of our neighbor. He was a husband and wonderful father to 2 boys. The youngest boy is 8 and Jude idolizes him and calls him his best friend. He died at home after having spent the past year as #1 on the list for a lung transplant. If only that lung had come! Devestating loss.

Today Jude was playing with his anatomy kit. He got out the skull and brain and demonstrated to me how he thought his brain surgeries were done. He missed the little step about removing a portion of the skull to get to the brain. I asked him if he really wanted to know and he was adamant that he did. I showed him all the gorey details about his brain surgeries and even told him for the first time that he has 2 titanium plates and 4 screws in his head (compared to the 3 titanium plates and 15 screws he had from the first surgery).  He seemed pretty excited about it.  He said it meant he is “2% robot and 98% human.”

For the past 2 hours or more, I’ve been working with Levi and then with Jude on building what I was calling the coolest track ever for the boys’ Thomas the train set. I was even attempting to assemble the Blue Mountain Mystery set that Levi got for Christmas and that took 5 adults to assemble the first time and only time it’s been set up. Jude was a big help since he remembered how the thing looked put together. At one point he helped me with something and then said, “There. Now you don’t need any help until the next problem.” I am very tempted to glue the set or at least big chunks of it together if we ever do manage to put it together. Urgh. Who designs this stuff?

Tonight was Jude’s first music therapy session to help address his short term memory impairment that appears to have resulted from the radiation. When Andy asked Jude in front of his teacher at the end of the lesson about whether he had had fun, Jude denied having fun. But, as soon as we were outside, Jude asked, “Mommy, can you buy me the bongos?” I’m not surprised that Jude had fun. He really does like everything and can have fun doing anything.

Yes, Asher (16 months old) is talking. Mostly easy words like, “mama,” “baby,” “Jude.” But, last night he scared the heck out of me by jumping off the bed like the way his much bigger brothers do it. Then after Levi knocked the wind out of himself by jumping off the bed in the nursery and landing with his middle on arm of the recliner, we switched rooms to get them refocused. Asher said, “Jump bed” with a whine in his voice that made it crystal clear to me he was expressing his dissatisfaction with not being allowed to jump off the bed. Yikes!

It was another successful funny story last night. Jude didn’t throw up, but did get the hiccups. He said of my funny story, “You made me get new kinds of laughs.” He then went across the hall to where Andy was laying down with Levi and said, “If you thought I was screaming, I was laughing.”

Jude is definitely never happy on work days. He lives for “stay home days” and thinks it’s just awful that I only get 2 stay home days a week. Nevertheless, he thinks I have a great job. He offered up his thoughts on my job last night. He said something like, “You get to look at papers, do calls, walk places, drink hot chocolate. What could be better?” But, when it came time for me to leave this morning to go to the bus stop, he bundled up as well to come out with me and was trying to argue that all of us in the family have so much money that there is no need for me to work.  I love that kid, but his piggy bank would be depleted in no time.

After Jude learned that I had vacuumed up one of his Ninjago parts, he was crying and told me, “That’s one thing I don’t like about you. You vacuum up my toys.” (We managed to recover it much to Jude’s surprise and delight.)