The Brookston Family Blog
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Alice seems to have contracted the cold Porter’s been harboring since our return from Seattle. She’s been coughing little Alice coughs and leaking from her diminutive proboscis. Luckily she slept well this morning so she weathered the trip to Porter’s O.T. pretty well, staying with me in the waiting room.

Flashing her baby blues.

Uh, oh, the plane’s going down. Babyzilla’s got it in her crushing grip.

At O.T. today, Porter made me this Father’s Day card. Apparently he glued the tree down himself, chose and then used a punch to create the little leaf, rabbit and other shapes on the tree, then glued them to the tree. Also he colored the tree himself.

I never thought Father’s Day could be so cool. What a rush to have your son hand something to you that he made just for you.

On the back of the card was what I believe is Porter’s first authenticated signature. This one was created without any aid whatsoever. All previous signatures, I must confess, were forged by me or else I guided Porter’s hand. Sorry about that Sarah.

After a two week absence (last week: sick; before that; in Seattle), Porter had a triumphant return to occupational therapy. According to Theresa, his therapist, he did just great today. He paid attention, did what was asked of him and overall hit all the marks she wanted him to hit.

Porter perfectly constructs a vertical person by placing the puzzle pieces down in the correct order asked for.

As a reward, Porter got to swing on the swing he so loves.

Porter has been talking about a present for a few weeks now but we’d been unable to get any more information out of him about it. At school yesterday I was handed a small box wrapped in green tissue paper with stickers on it and tied with string at the top. My father’s Day present from Porter, I was told. Micki also told me she would be surprised if it lasted the day without Porter opening it himself because he had been so excited about it for days. So I put it out of sight in his backpack to at least get it home unopened. When Sarah got home from work yesterday, he pulled her into the spare bedroom and got out wrapping paper saying that “we need scissors” and “wrap present.” Sarah came to me and asked if I knew anything about a present and I told her about the green box. Porter and Sarah excitedly took the box into the spare bedroom with scissors in hand. They emerged later with the silver package pictured here. About 6:00 a.m. this morning Porter came in to our bedroom with the present and handed it to me. It was so adorable. I managed to avoid that opening but later Porter tried again downstairs. Will we make it to Sunday without opening it? It’s looking doubtful. At this point I don’t even care what’s in the box. I’m so touched by him being this excited about giving me a present that that quite frankly feels like the present itself. What more could I possibly want? It’s one of those moments I refer to as “melting,” when all my defenses are stripped away and I’m overcome with warm feelings of love and become uncontrollably emotional. It’s these moments that make life worthwhile. See, I’m melting again right now as I type this. Damn.

Porter tries to give me the present again this morning.

What could it be?