Simple Things [by Matt]

In Minnesota, it has been a very busy few days. I have not taken the time to post pictures of the progress on the bedroom, mostly because I have been too busy working on it! It is getting closer. I plan to be sanding/priming tomorrow (Friday).

However, I felt I needed to pause from my work to share this from today. At supper time, I came up from working in the basement to help get supper on ready and to get everyone to the table. I went out to get K from the living room and he was whimpering a bit and his nose was red and his eyes were wet and I immediately started to try to figure out what was wrong.

So I started at the beginning of the day. This morning K had a bone scan at the University of St. Thomas as part of a "stander" study that he is involved with at Gillette. It was not his favorite, as it is a "medical" environment, which always makes him more tense and it was a new location he had not been to before. Add to that the fact that they wanted us to hold him still for 30 seconds to 3 minutes to get accurate scans of his bones. 2 hours later we went home and he seemed fine. Maybe he was still bothered by something about the morning?

Around lunch time Andrea and I skyped to try to figure out what it is going to look like on Saturday when they get home and who is going to take T to the hospital and when, etc. As part of that call, Andrea had a chance to talk to each of the kids for a few minutes. Maybe K was really missing Mom after seeing her?

All day today, Owen has been cleaning his stuff out of his bedroom to make way for Bogomila's furniture so it is ready when she gets home. Late this afternoon, K had crawled his way in there for a bit. Was K upset because things are getting all changed around in his room?

At supper itself, he was just whimpering and giving me "the lip" and did not want to eat hardly anything. What is going on?

Toward the end of supper I thought I would see if he wanted to take a bath as that is usually something he loves and I thought it might get him out of his funk. I perked up and put his arm to his chest saying that it was "his turn", but pretty quickly was sad again. Now I am really wondering...

Then the light bulb turned on. He had had his AFO braces on all day from the time we went to the scan until the end of supper. We often take them off when he gets home from school or just at some point in the afternoon to give him a break and then sometimes put them back on again. However, with him not being at school and me being in the basement working all afternoon, I completely forgot about his braces not being taken off.

I took his braces off and with in 10 seconds he was his normal, mostly happy, self again. He still got his bath and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So here I was trying to figure out what kind of emotional drama he was dealing with and how in the world could I help him through it and the simple answer was that his feet were tired of being in his braces and he just wanted a break!

Now, back to the mudding!