Country Life

It's another Tuesday--I'm working in the library, which is quite busy now with people getting their papers written before spring break next week and the athletes who are coaxed into keeping their grades up to stay on the team. Henry is staying with Sunchai and Su and their daughter Pammy, the Thai couple who are here studying. Henry ate chicken and okra with me in the new student center. This photo was taken last Tuesday in my office--he had a kid's meal of macaroni and cheese and fish.

I sort of got burned out on Imagination Movers, but over the weekend we saw one. Henry enjoys the music. He has started laying on a wooden box to watch tv. This was an old quilt box that my grandmother had--I refinished it and put wheels on it and use it as a coffee table. But I cover it with a towel because Henry kept running into it with his scooter.

Henry has a play saxophone. I was a little surprised when he tried blowing on it, because it makes music by pushing the buttons, you can't blow into it. But he recognizes it as a musical instrument that should be blown into.

I bought some pinwheels for the yard because it's so windy outside. I guess it is a lazy way of watching him play in the wind--it takes less energy than a kite and there is no string to untangle.

Henry seems to get better at communicating every day. He understand everything I say and he can make himself known with one word and pointing. He is more energetic about making vocalizations now. He usually starts jabbering in the morning as soon as he sees me.

Henry is interacting more with his environment. We went to a store a few days ago and as I was walking out (pushing him in a cart) I wasn't really thinking and was just moving through the parking lot. He started jabbering and waving his hands and pointing--I had passed the car and he was trying to get me to see it. Another time he started pointing back in an aisle we had just passed through in another store. I thought he wanted something off the shelf, but later I notice one of his shoes was missing--it had fallen off in that aisle.

As part of our country living we encounter such things as this racoon. I have actually seen five or six raccoons in the yard--all three times bigger than the cats. I chased two out of the laundry room in the guest house a couple of months ago--they were locked up in there two days and made a big mess. Somehow last week one got in the garage. It was difficult chasing it out, at one point it actually got in the house because I left the door open.

But a couple of days later I realized there was a racoon in the attic--maybe the same one I chased out of the garage. Friday night I opened the garage door and the racoon lunged at me like it was trying to get in the house. I was barefooted so I didn't want to kick it--I just screamed and slammed the door shut. Then the next morning I bought the trap. Monday morning I had caught the racoon.

I put the trap back in the box it came in and released the racoon in a small roadside park 15 miles from home on the way to work. This is as close as Henry got to it--he didn't seem that interested in getting its attention.

As soon as I opened the cage the racoon scurried off to the small nearby woods.

I have reached a milestone I set for myself with Henry. When I picked him up at the orphanage in Binh Duong he was a week over 16 months old. Now he has been with me the same amount of time. Before this point I thought about the fact that Henry had spent more of his life before he came to me than he had spent with me. Now we have passed that hump and I am really glad to have him be a part of my life.