My poor little boy...

Thursday night before bed Jake wanted to talk to me about how nervous he was feeling about the 3rd grade program he had to perform in the next day. He has been really struggling lately with anxieties and stresses, and we have been working very hard to help him learn coping skills for dealing with them. We had a good talk about how it is perfectly normal to feel nervous before performances, but also about how it is important to face down our fears and not let them control us and stop us from having experiences in this life. He seemed to calm down and went to sleep easily enough....

Only to wake up the next morning sick as a dog. Cough, fever and chills, sore throat and no voice, and a big case of disappointment that he wouldn't get to be in the program after I had talked and hyped it up the night before. (Seriously? Can't a mom catch a break?!) We went to the doctor and he was diagnosed with RSV. No bueno, but at least with no babies in our home anymore it wasn't as scary as it could be. He spent a quiet day alternately dozing and playing on his DS. I rented him a couple of games for it and he's spent the last three days playing it pretty much non-stop.

Saturday morning we woke up to the doctor's office calling to tell us that his strep culture had come back positive so he had strep in addition to the RSV and they were calling in a prescription for him. I could write a couple of paragraphs about my day here, but suffice it to say that I went to the store to get a few groceries and pick up his medicine and didn't realize until I got home and was putting away said groceries that I had forgotten to get the medicine. Sigh.... it was a long day.

Sunday and Monday were spent quietly in recovery mode. More playing on the DS... but I guess by day four even Nintendo can get a little boring. This morning Jake asked me to teach him how to knit. Inside I kind of sighed a little bit, I've tried to teach him several times over the past three or so years and each time he gets frustrated and wants me to hold his hands on every. single. stitch! And then I get frustrated and call a halt to the whole thing. But I just smiled and told him to go find his needles and the cone of cotton yarn and he could make a dish cloth.

I think 8 must be the magic number. (Either how old someone should be before you try to teach them to knit, or the number of times it takes them to learn... you take your pick.) He got it! It clicked! And now he is a knitting fool. As a matter of fact when I called him to dinner tonight his response was, "Just let me finish this row..."  

I don't know whether to be proud or scared.