Ethan, gifted in kicking my butt. April 11, 2007
Ethan’s favourite neighbour, Hannah, and her family are leaving tomorrow. They’re going to live in Austin, TX, for two years. We invited them over for one last lunch together today and Ethan helped me make a banana loaf to share and kept me company while I prepared foodage. To give him something to do while I stuffed mushrooms, I asked him if he’d like to write a letter to give to Hannah. I fetched him some of my paper and a pen (he’s just learned the proper pencil grip, something I was mildly paranoid about because I didn’t want him forming bad habits before going to school), and asked him what he wanted to write. He told me, and I spelled it out letter by letter while he wrote industriously.
“Dear Hannah
I hope you have a nice time in America
From Ethan xxxx”
I also showed him how to put his fingertip at the end of a word to mark the space between words, which I remember learning at school when I was five and continuing to do in my usual pedantic manner until I was about eight. I don’t have my camera at the moment so I didn’t take a photo but suffice to say that Ethan’s writing is pretty darn good for someone who just turned four.
To add to my extreme pride in my kids, Ethan and Amy have both had doctor’s visits this week. Amy visited an eye specialist yesterday because, at 21 months, she still has a partially undeveloped tear duct which gunks up whenever she has a cold. Since it hasn’t bothered her much, I put her on the DHB waiting list for a specialist appointment, and it so surprised me that I don’t think I’d go public again. The clinic was a dingy, grubby-looking building with two-year-old magazines (and lovely, lovely nurses who clucked over Amy and offered me coffee) and obviously short on funding. The three waiting areas were packed and even though we were running ten minutes late, we sat for about half an hour — when I called the clinic to say were were late, they told me not to worry because they’re always running behind — and Amy was an utter angel. She smiled and looked around at the other patients. She sat, ankles crossed, in her own chair and flicked through a book, then played quietly on the floor with a toy. She played peekaboo with another baby, then when she’d had enough of all the people she came and snuggled on my knee and we played “name the parts of my face” for ten minutes.
The appointment itself, all two minutes of it, was positive. A follow-up in four months.
Today Ethan had to go for his four-year booster shots. We arrived at the doctor’s office five minutes early and the kids played quietly with the toys, read books, talked to other people. The nurse was running behind and we waited for half an hour (annoying since we were the only people there, and Ethan was already nervous) before we went in. Ethan sat next to me and we discovered that he was getting two needles, one in each arm. He snuggled into my side and we asked him to find the bananas in a big poster of fruit and vegetables, and he was so busy looking that he didn’t feel the first needle at all. Woo!
The second time he was more aware because it was the side nearest me and he couldn’t snuggle in, but he didn’t cry at all. He moaned once and tried to pull away but as soon as it was done, he was fine. He was very brave.
