We Go With Him

A Giant Among Us

 

The cold that Jim felt coming on as he stepped off the train in Boston has just gotten about out of me (well, I'm still coughing) -- Jim is better -- and Charlie is enduring.

He got himself through school after a night of coughing, and waking, and wanting a walk at 3am, and going back to bed and sleep, on Monday night. He made it through a highly unexpected and potentially deleterious event: Another child on his bus got, it seems, upset enough that the driver needed to drop her or him off first. So not only was Charlie on the bus home for a good hour and a half at least; the bus had thoroughly veered from its usual course.

After he was finally home, Charlie was peaceful and, coughs and all, enjoyed a bike ride. He wanted bedtime and sleep by just after 8pm. He has been coughing some but not as much as the previous night and I'm hopeful he can get some much-needed sleep after a few nights of disrupted (because of coughing, his own and ours/mine) sleep.

I do think Charlie is a giant among us and not only because, as the photo above makes quite clear, he is tall.

 

Emotions Can Sap the Energies

 

Monday Charlie didn't have such a good day at school. The night before, he had slept poorly; he had first insisted on sitting in his big brown chair and refused to go to bed. Finally at 2am, he went up to lie and down. He then woke at 7am in good time for the bus, but he can hardly have been rested.

He was crying at the end of his Monday bike ride with Jim but then cheered up after putting all the bike things away and fell soundly asleep from 6-8 pm. There was shrimp my mom had made for him on a plate and he ate that and some other things. We went out for a walk that was more of a zooming run; I wondered if Charlie was trying to use up his energy.

Perhaps yes: By half-past 11pm, he was back to sleep. Jim also pointed out that Charlie had epxended a lot of energy anticipating my parents' arrival. Not to mention, the cough that just won't go away still plagues us.

Waiting For His Grandparents

My parents' plane was 30 minutes early this afternoon, a good thing as Charlie had been awaiting their arrival since waking on Sunday morning. For some years, their visits have been preceded by at least one severe anxiety attack like this. We didn't write up a social story but mentioned the impending visit in a casual kind of way, while emphasizing that it would be fun and good times (but of course!) and that we would 'all be together' as, for the past three years when my parents have come at this time of year, it has been because I've been preparing to travel to Greece with students, an event which has evoked intense anxiety in Charlie.

We had also decided that, keeping the anxiety issues in mind, it would be best to 'stay local' instead of atempt one of our usual weekend long-bike-ride adventures. Jim and Charlie rode bikes on their neighborhood course; Charlie and I walked. We stayed in the house and, while Charlie looked as if he might ask to go somewhere, we did not and he was okay with it. While Jim went to get my parents at the airport, Charlie and I enjoyed making brownies after he found the red box of mix I had quietly snuck into the cabinet.

Charlie did all the usual things at my parents' arrival -- going through their suitcases, grabbing my dad's jacket -- and something different -- going down to the basement and retrieving the Winnie the Pooh beach chair my parents gave him when he was a toddler and that his stuffed Barney used to sit in, and setting it up in the living room among his things on the floor. He carried a suitcase upstairs as requested, watched my mother cook dinner, and placed a valentine card he had made on my dad, who was napping in the brown Laz-Ee-Boy.

My dearly loved father has cancer and has been through many treatments and procedures. He is bald now and, as anticipated, Charlie was flummoxed by this. But then, Charlie has been very attuned to my dad's health all along.

I know he is glad that Gong Gong is sitting in his chair.

 

Big Wind Weekend

 

We're having a super windy weekend! Winds up to about 30 mph, resulting in us finding a very large branch had fallen in front of our front steps after returning from a 14-mile-ride (in that wind) on Saturday morning.

 

 

Judgment Call

 

At 11 pm on Friday night, Charlie asked for a walk.

Aware that you can have too much of a good thing (walks), and still mindful of the night before Jim left for Boston's midnight adventure, and of how Charlie had been trying to sleep for the past few hours and had had a certain nervous, frenetic energy apparent even as he was listening to music in his room and running around on the second floor -- we pointed out that it was late and time for sleep.

'Sleep,' said Charlie and with no particular ado proceeded to tuck himself in bed and to fall asleep in the next ten minutes.

I had had on my mind some Parents magazine article (read when Charlie was a toddler) about how right-before-bed exercise can rev a child up rather than down. I thought, too, of how often Charlie asks for something just for the sake of asking while (gasp) it is sometimes wiser to exercise a little parental judgement.

Even the perpetual motion boy needs a break.

 

Anticipation Causes Butterflies in the Belly, Right?

 

After the weekly bike-ride-less Wednesday, must ride!

A possible stomachache led to Charlie in distress for a few minutes in the morning at school; he had not been happy getting off the bus. But he was soon back to being easy-going. I had sensed something might be up as Charlie awoke before 6am and wanted a walk. After the bike ride and a light dinner, he wanted two more walks.

My mom and dad are coming on Sunday for a visit: Charlie usually starts getting upset the week before they come.

So he's right on schedule.

Regarding the title, thanks to an earlier comment from Ashmire.

 

Coughcah

 

(The title is a random-ish reference to a writer I'm very fond of.)

As we have the Cold That Won't Go Away, we have all been coughing. Usually this is a problem as the sound of coughing is irksome to Charlie's sensitive hearing and, in the past, many I time I have run to the basement, or even the backyard, rather than have a very distressed Charlie.

This round of illness, he has been putting his hands to his hears and wincing a bit, but that is it.

Because he's simply handling loud noises that grate on his nerves and nervous system better? Maybe because he has been coughing plenty himself? ('You're coughy!' I said to him the other day. 'Cough-y' said Charlie).

Sometimes when he sees that I'm about to cough, he has been putting his hands over his ears in anticipation. And when I was driving Charlie around on Wednesday afternoon and felt a coughing fit coming on, I was relieved that I had stowed a water bottle in the passenger door pocket. 

 

A Late Bus Before Bowling and Bikes

 

Charlie was so excited to go to school after four days off that he woke at 4.50am on Monday, had some breakfast, asked for a walk (we all three went). Then he went back to bed until Jim roused him at 7.25 just in time for the bus.

Only, the bus was late by 40 minutes, apparently because the aide was late to show (it's never happened before).

I had gone into work; Jim and Charlie waited together in the sun in out front yard and, at 10 minutes after 8, the bus came and Charlie went onto a great day including a bowling field trip, a spirited wait on the front lawn for Jim to return (Charlie and I took turns peering up the street), a vigorous bike ride in the wind, a trip (with all three of us) to get groceries (well, sushi for one of his lunch boxes).

4 Very Good Days

Despite the abrupt start to Charlie's 4-day weekend (due to me thinking it was only a 3-day weekend), this was Charlie's best-ever-yet long weekend.

Usually I have a feeling of dread about any time Charlie has a holiday off from school and his being sick only added to the worry. But despite him coughing some in the day and in spurts at night in his sleep, and despite both of us coughing in fits and manifesting other signs of sickness, Charlie was peaceful-easy even-keel throughout the entire four days, including on the long trip back up the Garden State Parkway from the beach on Sunday.

We did take pains to keep our end of the peaceful-easy. One thing we always have to be careful of is talking, and talking too much, about people and topics (politics) that Charlie does not know so much about, in the car. Too often we can get a bit carried away and Charlie, understandably, gets irked, especially if there is any sense of conflict or contention in what we are talking about. I'm not at all sure how much of the conversation's content he grasps; I have thought that Charlie perhaps thinks he might be the subject of the conflict or contention and up goes his anxiety.

Charlie himself elected to stay 'local' on Monday, asking for a neighborhood bike ride after waking at 9; wanting, really wanting, a burrito -- we were wary as we've gotten him one a lot over the past few days, but it has been a holiday -- and so we did get him one; then afterwards handing me the Greek archaeology textbook I had left on the old blue couch, curling up and napping while Jim graded papers and I did some writing. On waking around 4, Charlie was ready for a second bike ride. The day finished off unremarkably with our usual walk, iPad time, poking around in the refrigerator and cabinets and munching. Despite the nap, Charlie was asleep by 10pm.

A quiet triumph, this long weekend was.

 

49 Mile Weekend

 

I know I've been saying we are all coughing away. We are, but somehow we seem unable to stay away from our usual activities, i.e., bike riding.

And so, after sleeping in, Jim and Charlie had a 49-mile weekend, with an 18-mile ride at the beach on Sunday followed by a 6-miler at home, after Saturday's 21 miles.

Leading us to reflect on how tough and enduring our boy is.