So now I'm all annoyed and sick to my stomach. I'll talk about Nathaniel to calm down.

I'm way overemotional. His grandpa took him for a walk this morning. He told me they were going to the high school so that he could play on the playground. I sat in the car warming it up before I went to work and watched them walk away down the street, hand in hand. I started crying. I'm not even sure why. I miss him. He's such a big boy. He walks down the street in his baseball hat, white t-shirt, and little boy shorts. He talks the whole way. Yet he's such a baby. He's still so little and needs protection.

Last night Nathaniel came home after dark because his grandparents took him to a Buddhist monastary. Trung and I took him for a walk. Trung ran into the house to get a long-sleeved shirt for me so I wouldn't be cold and we slowly started walking. Nath babbled away in baby language mixed with English. I finally got the gist of his talk and was floored. It made me laugh. He was very seriously lecturing me in his baby voice about how cars "go" in the street and not him and not Mommy. People don't go in the street  -- cars do. I gave him that lecture a couple days ago when he kept trying to throw his ball into the street. He held Trung's hand and my hand as he walked. He pointed out the moon to me. He notices the sky every night. We taught him how to be still and let cats come to you to pet them. Sometimes he wanted to run ahead, but he always stopped at each street and reached up so we would take his hand. He rode on his Daddy's shoulders on the way home and giggled the whole way. Anything on the sidewalk that looked darker in moonlight was labeled, "Yucky." Everytime the moon disappeared behind a tree or roof he'd look surprised and then say, "Moon go bye-bye!" 

He likes his Once Upon a Potty book. He brings it to me and flips through the pages to look at the pictures. I describe what the pictures show and what the text is talking about. One of the first pages shows a naked little boy and the text says, "This is Joshua. Joshua is a little boy." I named the boy's body parts. I was really suprised and pleased that he pointed and said, "Pee pee!" Then he pointed to himself and said, "Pee pee!" He looked at a picture and recognized that it symbolically represented some part of himself! I showed him how the boy could do pee pee and poo poo in the potty and what a good thing that was. He calls pee pee and poo poo "yucky." No doubt he picked that up from Trung's parents and Linh. 

Again, the other day he astounded me. We were driving to where my parents used to live to see fireworks. When he saw the water tower he delightedly squealed, "Mamaw!!" My heart sunk. His grandmother, grandfather, one of his aunties, and all the animals moved away about 2000 miles a month ago. Did he think he was going to go to Gamaw's house? I carefully reminded him of the very long drive we went on with Gamaw and the dogs. Then he smiled and said, "Gamaw, bye-bye!" I smiled and agreed. I was relieved that he remembered. Then he said, "Auntie Amy, bye-bye!" He continued to name all the dogs and say bye-bye. Every since then, he wakes up in the morning, stretches out across my tummy on his back, stares at the ceiling, and names them all in a row followed with "bye-bye." I agree that they are gone, but I talk about them and tell him that they love him. The other day I put together a photo book of my family and the dogs for him. He was sooooooo excited! He helped me by holding the book flat while I slipped the photos under plastic. Then he paged through and pointed at everyone and named them. Then he ran to show Trung's mother his new book. He ate breakfast and paged through his little book. He carried it with him all day long. Every time he sees his little book he exclaims over it, grabs it, pages through to look at the photos, names everyone, and talks about what he sees in the pics. I still need to get pics of my dad and the horses, though. 

He's such a sweet boy. Usually we take off our shoes as soon as we walk in the door. I've been having pain when I do that, so I walked through the house to dump my stuff off in my room. Then I could sit down and take off my shoes. Nathaniel was flabbergasted. He pointed at me and yelled, "Shoes! Shoes!" I laughed at his shocked reaction. He grined at me, but the minute both shoes were off, he picked them up, and ran them into the hallway and threw them on top of the pile of shoes. Then he picked up one of my shoes and threw it directly on top of the other one. He nodded in satisfaction and that was that.

The other day it was really hot. I was in the kitchen working on my laptop. He came in and handed my bottle of water to me. I said, "Oh, do you want some water?" I opened the bottle thinking he wanted to drink from it. However, he said, "Water," put his finger on my mouth and pushed the bottle up to my face. He randomly fetched my bottle of water and told me to drink on a hot day ^-^

Another cute thing he does is to feed me. It's funny because I try to feed him and he's trying to feed me so we're sitting there feeding each other :-D When I come home cranky from work he nods sagely, runs out of the room, and comes back in to feed his favourite snack to me. He also blows kisses to me when I go to work in the morning. 

I've got to end here. The smell of some sort of lotion is going to make me puke. I'm going to go fix lunch and eat. If it's not gone by then, I'm taking all my stuff and going home to work.