If you haven’t figured it out yet, my son is a cautious one. He is incredibly sensitive, and comes by it honestly. If you haven’t figured me out yet, I am also hyper sensitive. Ask my siblings. They’ll vouch.
Today, Grandma Willa came over for the morning to play with the kids while I got my kitchen cleaned up and kept the kids alive. Dekker knows her well and doesn’t play strange or anything, which is always a treat. Laela, who is a bit hesitant of new people, went right to her, and even did her little party tricks to show off. It was a fun household.
Over lunch, there was a fly buzzing around the table, and Dekker was super unimpressed. I know, I know, it sounds like a tiny thing. But he gets really worked up about it. He gets all squirmy in his chair and won’t eat anything as long as he can see it landed somewhere. It kept landing on the table, and walking in his general direction, and he was getting worked up. I’ve showed him multiple times how to shoo it away, but he’s always just gotten more upset. However, somehow, Grandma Willa had the magic words today. By the end of lunch, he was waving his hands around, shooing away bugs that weren’t there, as if it were a game. A very good game.
While the kids napped and Brady drove home, I lay in bed and rested. Eventually the kids woke up and Brady went to retrieve them. Dekker often comes into our room and cuddles with me in the bed a bit. But I like having the fan on, and Dekker adamantly does not. He asks sooo politely for us to turn it off, but the fan is nice, and we know it isn’t a threatening thing. So today, I said that I reeeaaally wanted to see him, so maybe he could just run run run reeeaaally fast past it and come over anyway. He immediately lit up and raced over. We celebrated with lots of high fives at going past the fan all by himself!! How big and brave is he?! We sat in bed together, visiting and playing toys. And all of a sudden, the fly was around him. Around his face. He made a whiny sound, but just briefly. I watched him freeze, saw the wheels in his head turning, and he reached out those beautiful, smooth little arms and waved them around. He giggled, and looked over at me to make sure I was watching. I celebrated like crazy, and called Brady in to show him, so Dekker felt super accomplished, which he definitely did. He actually got upset moments later because the bug flew away. “See another bug, please?” I couldn’t resist laughing. He got bored of being bug-free, so he left the bed, walked hesitantly towards the fan, then smiled and raced past it! Outside of our room, I heard him tell Brady “Dekker run past fan by his self!”
So, I know these are small victories, and you may very well laugh at me in your mind, but please show support instead! The fact that he didn’t just break down and kick his feet is a really big deal. He is learning, and its sooo wonderful to see the transformations!