Weeping

My son's obsession - "AB's, peas!", he says. In John-speak he's asking for the ABC game on the computer. And he's so serious with this game. He'll sit there for 10 minutes or so pushing buttons to hear, " U. U is for Urial." Have I mentioned it's an ABC Zoo game. All the letter examples are from the zoo. It's a very well -stocked zoo! It has fish, birds, and marine mammals.

John did not go right to sleep last night and he woke too early this morning, at least for me. So he was a little on the fussy side all day. I thought it would be good to get out of the house. So, we took a trip to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and some playtime. It was pretty busy and there were lots of older kids in the play area, unsupervised. I don't get overly protective of John normally, but I was not happy that these kids were (play) fighting in the area and their parents seemed to be non-existent. More than once I said something to them. John usually hangs down low, but eventually he got up the nerve to climb to the top. It was OK for a few minutes and then I heard some crying. It was John. Some little girl had been following him around and kept trying to pick him up. It turns out she must have tried to drag him down the enclosed slide. He's quite a cautious kid and it takes while before he decides he'll try something. And being forced into something like that not on his terms did not make him happy in the least. He was OK once he got to the bottom, but he decided it was time to go. So we went to eat. And then he got impatient. It always takes longer for me to eat than for him. He was anxious to get back to playing! We did play a bit more and then went to complete our errand.

We got some big paper for John for draw on. I only had some letter size paper here (well, and newspaper). And that was not quite suitable. So we went to Walmart to get a roll of 20+ inch wide paper. And we went right home and drew on a piece. And he liked it. A lot! He especially liked his blue crayon. Can you tell?

After he woke form his nap, he was in a very weepy mood. He'd slept until 500p, but had gotten his nap off to a rough start as we'd had thunder in the area for quite awhile when I first laid him down. Daddy went in to retrieve him. And rocked him and then rocked him some more. Still more weeping. So he changed his diaper and then I came in. I had brought my camera in to try to get a picture of them in the rocker, but Daddy had already proceeded to the changing. So when I took JHP, Daddy took the camera. John and I sat and rocked. And he continued to weep. I say weep because it wasn't his usually whine. It was sadder somehow. Anyway, Dad took some pictures of us.

This one's pretty cool. The composition is good, but the exposure in the original shot was horrible. The camera made some bad decisions on Auto. So I tweaked it a bit and made it a black & white. And I like it this way. John continued to weep for quite while even after he gave up his blankie and paapaa and we left his room. I figured food would help things, but when he's in this kind of mood, it's rather difficult to get him to eat. You've got to engage him. Today, the food of choice was pretzel sticks. And it worked. He eventually exited his funk after getting some food into him.

Dad had bath duties tonight as I had a meeting at church. When I got home, John N related this story that illustrates just how tender-hearted our son is sometimes. They were playing with the wooden blocks. Daddy would build a tower and John would knock it down, saying "uh-oh!" as he did it. Then John would build a tower and knock it down. At some point, Daddy covered all the blocks up and wouldn't let John have any. As John tried to get some, Daddy rebuffed him. This is a game they have played before. But tonight, John said John just burst into tears and came crawling into Daddy's arms. I guess he thought John was rejecting him and it hurt his feelings. He's had other similar reactions when you raise your voice at him, but it's not consistent. I think it depends on his mental state. This evening he must have been teetering on the edge, given all the weeping earlier in the evening. Also, Daddy said that during the bath, he raised his voice concerning John's insistence on touching the water faucet, which is a no-no and has been forever, and John lost it once again. Thank goodness bedtime was next on the agenda!

-EBP-