Things I Didn’t Know About Oscar

Now that Oscar talks a little, I’m finding out all kinds of things about him that I didn’t know previously, like . . .

His favorite food is juice.  He did not elaborate on this, but I suspect it’s not the juice I buy in a bottle, but the juice that Norma makes him in the fancy juicer.

His favorite color is “yellow . . .  no, orange, no, red.”

He pronounces “yellow” as “jello”.  Yes, our nanny is Nicaraguan.  He can also say “vamanos a casa”.

When he’s thinking about how to answer a question, he touches his index finger to the middle of his lips and says, “oh . . . hmm” and taps his lips a few times.  It’s precious.  Etta has started doing this, too, to be like her big brother.

He’s very contrary.  I actually knew this already, but he loves to say no, and it’s not just “no,” but “NO [insert word for what he doesn’t want plus the next logical term]”, like “NO doctor, NO medicine.”  He’s also a fan of “nuh uh uh” while waving his finger.

He didn’t know what the ocean was until December.  We went to Monterey right after he got his glasses and when we crossed over the mountain and saw the water for the first time he said “Mom, what IS that”.  I had no idea what he was referring to, thinking it must be some little bird or a truck, some detail, but then he said “blue water.” I said it was the ocean, which he repeated and said “BIG water” and I realized how much he had not been seeing for the first three and a half years of his life.  Like pretty much everything.  We’ve visited the ocean many, MANY times (two trips to Hawaii, one to Mexico, another to Thailand and just going to the beach here in Northern California) and he had never known what we were seeing.

His favorite thing to say is “what is that,” and he’s very quickly picking up on so much.  It’s somewhat reassuring that he’s not just picking up on some things that he “should” have known; he’s focusing his questions more on things that he might not have noticed even if he had been able to see.  Like, he’ll pick up a toy and not ask what the toy is, but he’ll ask about the different components – those are the wings of the airplane, the engine, the fuselage, the landing gear, the tail, etc.

He worries a lot about things I don’t think he should worry about.  If he or his sister spills even a drop of water on a rug, he’ll freak out saying “oh NO, NOOO” and for the next day or two he’ll say “rug wet, oh no.”  He asks about the iPhone that we lost months ago almost every other day, “black iPhone, where IS it?  Where did it go?”  I’d like the answer to that one, actually.

He listens carefully and understands a lot more than I ever imagined.  I suspect this might be a function of the fact that he was pretty much blind and incapable of speech for the first three and a half years of his life.  Last night I was trying to get him and Etta to go to sleep by telling them a story about a mom who was thinking about taking a weekend away from her kids to go to a photography retreat (we’re not into conventional story telling here), but she couldn’t decide whether to go. 

He answered by sitting up, leaning over me and placing his hands on either side of my face and saying “no go Mom.”  When I asked where the mom should go instead, he answered “castle.”  Castle is Disneyland in Oscar speak.  Obviously, I’m not going to the photography workshop.  Who would want to spend a moment away from this kid when he’s getting even more interesting?

But we’re not going back to Disneyland just yet, either.

March 7, 2011 Posted by Oscar and Etta's mom | Oscar, special needs | 10 Comments