Mangled English is so cute!

Today my son and I were driving to the library. It was hot in the car, so I cracked open the front passenger window, and then I cracked open his window in the back. He loves it when I open his window, even just the tiniest crack.

"Window," he said.

"Two windows," I replied.

"One-dow, two-dow," he said.

So cute!!!!

Well, I thought it was cute.

He also did a bunch of things today, and in the past couple of weeks, that I think were so cute and wonderful, but would probably bore you all to death. I'm in the middle of that awkward toddler-mom phase, where the kid is doing amazing new things he's never done before several times a day, but they're the same amazing things every toddler does.

The fact that he still has significant speech delays changes the tenor of my joy. Every time his speech improves, I think it's ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL, in a way that a parent whose child does not have speech delays probably doesn't experience. It was the same thing with physical achievements, when AwesomeCloud had physical delays. For instance, when Cloud finally learned to walk, I was overcome with relief. A huge burden had been lifted.

That's life for a parent of a child with delays. You know it's likely that your child will do this and that and the other thing, eventually, but you're never completely 100% sure until it happens.

It's not the kind of worry I would choose to have, except... well, I did. We chose this. On purpose. And we're pretty happy about it.

I've been attending Zen meditation again. Zen Teacher Jim is off gallivanting in Europe (just kidding) and Zen Teacher Tim is running the show at home. Although I don't have the same rapport with Tim as I do with Jim, Tim says some things now and then that really sink in. American Zen is starting to gel with me. It's not precisely Chinese culture, per se, but it's a Western-style window into Eastern thinking. We Westerners treat the Asian worldview as mysterious and opaque, and so it becomes. But it doesn't have to be so unapproachable. I can approach it if I try hard enough. If I listen intently enough.

Plus, some of this Zen stuff is just plain brilliant, and worth knowing just for its own sake. I hope Cloud develops some cultural pride. He has a lot to be culturally proud of.