Jeff sent this to my Yahoo email on Dec 15, 2020, so I did not immediately see it. The photo title is Marty Jung and Jeff Cotter at Bill and Dora’s Annaversery.jpg

Dear Eric,

Here is a photo of your Dad and Me. Please send it to Mara also I’m sure she’d like the photo too !!!

Jeff

I sent it to Mara, and she replied:

I love seeing this. He looks so happy. I was smiling when I saw it and yet so sad too If that makes sense.

Elliot eating an ice cream cone in the basement while watching Ghibli’s “Prince Monoke”. He turns to me and says, “Want some?” I say “No thanks”. Then he turns to Maxi and says, “Want some?” Max doesn’t accept and Elliot goes back to enjoying his ice cream.

Pho 99 on County Line Road. Elliot LOVES to go there with me to pickup our take-out dinner. He plays with their three water fountains, gets a candy from the gumball machine, runs around, and finally watches Gumby on the Moon while sitting in the booth. And it always has to be Gumby on the Moon, nothing else.

He calls this Buddha statue, “The Man With The Hat”.

The people who work there know him. A couple of visits ago, I did not bring him and they asked, “Where is your little boy?” This latest time he came with me and they mentioned, “Your little boy is back.” It is very nice.

I did it! Treadmill run. 2 hours, 5 minutes, and a few seconds on March 5, 2021.

13.11 miles. 21.0975 kilometers
Pace: 9:32 per mile.

It’s pretty difficult to find average completion times by age and gender, but I found these. I was not trying to run to complete exhaustion, so my times may have been faster if I was.

From https://runrepeat.com/how-do-you-masure-up-the-runners-percentile-calculator :

He pointed to his lower back and said “cactus” to indicate it hurts.

On Monday, a new speech therapist came to our house for Elliot. Just before she arrived, he wanted to play wiffleball in the house. I picked him up, carried him to the window in the library and Karolina or I said several times, “But there’s a lady coming to play with you. Look!” He watched as Jen Corrigan came to the door.

Over the next hour, he really enjoyed playing with Jen.

When Jen was leaving, Elliot began to cry. He did not want her to go. He said, “My lady…”, “My lady….” through tears, even after she had left.

The next day, after coming home from preschool, Elliot began to cry again in my arms while saying “My lady…! My lady!”

He really wanted Jen.

Karolina and I had to suppress our laughter.

After about 15-16 months of growing and speech therapy, Elliot is now 6-7 months ahead of his biological age in vocabulary! He started off something like 30% behind (he was not saying “mama” or “dada”, which was one of the red flags).

So proud of him!!

I drove Elliot to the Garden Preschool. I allowed him to watch a dinosaur/halloween episode from the T-Rex Ranch YouTube channel (he loves this father/son team who act as park rangers in a dinosaur ranch):

When we arrived, I told him he had to stop watching and go to school. He started crying — this exact thing happened when we left the house for school. He was even watching the same episode then.

Well, he was crying hysterically, something he does not normally do when I drop him off at school. Miss Erin and an older teacher tried comforting him. Off he went to the classroom. Shortly later, I received this from his teacher, Miss Sam:

She wrote, “Coloring a whale. Calmer already.”

Well, he looks calmer… but still very sad. It hurts me.

And a little later Sam sent this by email:

GUMBY, COME BACK!

(Pointing to the moon)

DINOSAURS!

Halloween songs and videos on YouTube… even though Halloween is long over. We also read every book about zombies, ghosts, vampires, mummies, witches, werewolves, Frankenstein, and goblins that we can get our hands on. Eve Bunting has a couple of great ones from late 80s and 1990. I have to find my childhood ghost book. Grendel is called “Halloween Cat”.

Cats and dogs

Playing spaceship in large cardboard boxes.

Pinball! And he is GOOD! He stands on his the stool that his grandpa Moe made for me when I was a little boy.

“Stand Up and Shout” in the car. He sings parts of it now.

Snowball fights, even indoors with Max’s “fake snowball stuffies.

Yesterday, we practiced catching baseballs and softballs at the dog park. He loved it and he’s not bad at it, too.

5 little monkies jumping on the bed (it used to be 10).

When we get him cake or a doughnut, he eats just the frosting or sprinkles and not the cake. Every time.

This is Elliot’s Preschool Teacher, Sam, texting me and Karolina about his language. January 25, 2021. So the Speech and Language Therapy has helped!