Saturday, November 06, 2010 5:05pm
I had a really awesome time with Austin today. I arrived at Perspectives only a couple minutes late, 2:47. They didn’t count me as late at all. I took their breath-a-lyzer thing and it went through just fine.
It was a couple minutes after 3:00 before I saw Austin eagerly, unabashedly opening the door himself and feeling totally comfortable with me. He is usually pretty shy, quiet, and reserved before saying anything, but today was very different! I didn’t have to coax him to talk at all by asking any questions. Instead, he spontaneously offered to tell me on his own, “I’m hungry and thirsty.” I remember feeling both thrilled and concerned at the same time! Thrilled, because this was the first time that my son felt comfortable and trustworthy enough to share something totally unsolicited with me so soon into our time together. My concern, however, was due to the fact that we were going to spending the next two hours together, and I didn’t bring anything with me for him to eat! I wasn’t sure what to do. I told the little guy that I could get him some water, which I did right away. When I walked back to the room, one of the staff people, Kimberly, was there asking Austin whether he was hungry or not. He nodded yes, and she was eventually able to scrounge up some breadsticks, crackers, and a Granola bar. The first thing he grabbed were the little breadsticks, which surprised us because he usually goes for sweeter things. Well, he ended up eating only half of one breadstick before handing me the rest of it, and then reaching for the chocolate chip Granola bar, which he was able to devour with no problem at all! Once he was finally done with it, (all activities were put on hold until he finished eating his Granola bar!). But, once he was finished, his hands were covered in melted chocolate. I insisted that we go to the bathroom to wash his hands. On the way, I had to tell him, “Don’t touch anything!!” He tried to open the bathroom door himself, but I did it for him instead. He went right up to the sink, reached over to get some soap, turned on the faucet, and just held his little hands under the running water. I had to encourage him to rub his hands together in order to get all of the chocolate off. Once the hands were clean, it was back to our room.
I had brought along with me a DVD called Cars, but we didn’t really pay much attention to it because we were both so intrigued with this little automated fishing game. He was actually much better at it than I was! He is really very competitive, too. I’m sure he probably gets that from his mother. He kept trying to cheat even though he didn’t have to. We played several games and I was keeping score. I used the opportunity to teach him here and there how to add by using my fingers. When I had to add a 3 and a 4, for instance, I held up four fingers on one hand, and three on the other and then I moved my hands together and told him, “Now all you have to do is count the fingers,” which he dutifully did, tapping each one of my fingertips with his own while counting out loud. When he got to seven, I smiled real big and then he smiled real big! (Obviously this only worked when both numbers were less than five!) There were a couple cute catch phrases I used that he liked repeating. The little fishies in this fake revolving pond would open their mouths and you had to try and get your little hook in its mouth before it closes again. Since Austin grabbed the only little pole that worked, I had to make a makeshift one out of string I found. It worked all right but not as easily as his did. I would frequently say, “Come on, you little bugger!”, trying to coax the fake fish to bite down hard enough for me to be able to pull it out of the revolving pond. (Yes, I did just say that, a revolving pond!)
I had a new person supervising this time. Her name was Janice. She was a fairly attractive blonde lady who was also very nice and was a little bit more involved with us than our last one.
A few minutes after 4:00, Jeffrey Postuma came into our room in order to steal our TV and DVD player! Jeffrey is the director of Parenting Time programs at Perspectives. He’s a really nice guy who has been so helpful with me. Austin and I played a couple more fishing games and then we decided we wanted to go outside. He had arrived in almost full skiing gear, complete with a winter coat, a hat, and gloves. It was in the mid-50’s outside. Nevertheless, we got him all geared up, grabbed a couple bats and balls out of the cabinet, and headed outside. We instantly started playing baseball. He tried several times to hit the ball with his very wide and lightweight bat. Every time he swung and missed, I would encourage him and say, “OHHH! What a good job! You almost got it!” One time, he actually DID hit the ball, and I jumped for joy and clapped for him!
Soon after this, he started squirming a bit as if he had to go to the bathroom. I instantly asked him if he needed to go potty, and he said yes. I rushed him over to the front door, and told him to go straight up the stairs where I knew there was a bathroom. I raced up the stairs ahead of him, (Janice was right by Austin’s side), in order to clean off the toilet seat with soap and water. (I’ve noticed that Austin doesn’t often notice the need to use a covering over the seat or to clean it before sitting down in public restrooms.) Since he was all dressed up in winter clothing, I helped him out of it as quickly as we could. The toilet was built more for adults than little kids, so I asked him a couple times if he needed help getting up onto it. He insisted no, so I let him take care of himself. My little boy knew exactly what to do and I just let him do it, including getting himself dressed again, flushing the toilet, and washing and drying his hands.
We had about 20 minutes left, so we got dressed back up again, and headed outside to play with the bats and balls. I was impressed to find out that Austin knew about several kinds of sports, including soccer, tennis, football, and baseball. I can already tell that he’s a very precocious child with a very high IQ. The reason I suspect this is because I know that my own IQ (as evaluated by a psychologist), is 137, which means that I’m more intelligent than 99.32% of the population.
Austin, like me, is starting to put things together. He has started asking me questions about what I know about the Schwarz side of the family, and I’ve been answering him honestly. He asked me specifically if I knew the names of his grandparents, and I said, “Yes, I know Ron and Beth.” He also asked me if I knew his cousin, Josiah. I said, “Yes, I do. But only when he was a little baby. I also know your aunt Melisa, and your aunt Katie. I also know your uncle Rhett.” He seemed perplexed by this and I said, “Your mom and I used to be married.” I then quickly changed the subject and we did something else.
I have NEVER said anything negative about Austin’s mom or anyone else in his family. I have never probed him about them, and have done nothing but respect and honor his relationship with them.