Our weekend had some ups and downs. Sometimes lately, I get cocky and think "Henry used to have all those behaviors, but he's doing so much better now- he's making great strides." And he is- he is. But then the day comes that we do something unusual, like picking up an uncle at the airport, and Henry reverts back to his house-on-fire voice and his insistent and overpowering manner, and I think that maybe we haven't come so far after all.

My brother-in-law was in town briefly yesterday. We headed out to the airport to meet him and wandered around. The confusion was my fault- instead of just saying we would drive by the passenger loading/unloading area, I said that we would park and all come in to the airport. I consistently make this mistake. I always think "boys like airports- this will be fun." And I always forget that it's confusing and crowded and both boys like to ride escalators*, and you can't even see any airplanes anyway, now that unticketed folks are not allowed beyond the security check.

(*I have a weird little escalator phobia- I have recurring dreams where I need to get on an escalator going down, but it's going really, really, really fast and it's hard to step on and hard to hold on... I obviously have done a good job of hiding this fear, because my kids love to ride the escalator!)

Henry kept shouting that he wanted to ride the escalator: repeating it non-stop in the house-on-fire voice. We rode it a couple of times, and then the boys and I just gave up and went back to wait by the car.

Once Bill found Uncle J., we all headed for breakfast at Bob Evans. As soon as he walked in the door, Henry spotted a Strawberry Supreme Pie in the display case. He pressed his face and sweaty hand to the glass and shouted "I want this pie! I want this pie! I want this pie!"

Why so much shouting? And why so much anxiety? You know, now that I think about it, I did not prep him ahead of time on the plan. Maybe if I had told him a few days ahead of time, this would not have all been so exciting and overwhelming. Duh. I know this stuff, but then I forget it. Or I think it's not necessary for a little Sunday morning trip to the airport.

On Saturday, Henry and I went to the library. There was a girl there, a few years older than Henry, who was reading aloud to her mom. She seemed to really struggle- one of those kids who reads
so
slowly
that
it's
hard
to
follow
what
she's
saying. Her mom was being kind of short with her, and correcting her in a gruff way, even when her mistake was something as simple as saying "of" instead of "off". I felt sorry for this girl, to be spending her Saturday afternoon in such an unpleasant way, and to be struggling so much with her reading. I hoped that she would grow to enjoy reading in spite of that.

At the same time, Henry was quietly reading aloud from the front cover of the Star Wars book on tape. "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... Luke Skywalker had returned home to Tatooine..."

Yes, most of that was memorization, but it still gave me a lift. What a blessing- Henry has his share of difficulties, but I'm so glad that reading isn't one of them!