Cow!

February 23rd, 2008 | by Matt |

Kevin can be a little obsessive, to say the least. He’s obsessed with keys already, and in the last few weeks he’s been focusing more of his energy on obsessing about cows. He loves animals (how could he not, growing up in our house?) and particularly farm animals. Maybe he likes cows because it was one of the first animal words he could say clearly enough for us to understand? Who knows.

He has a book of animals that we read many times a day, and he always likes to go to the cow page (also featured: Bull and Piggy, which he loves to say). When we go past the cow page, he keeps his fingers there so he can quickly jump back at any second. Sometimes if he doesn’t hold his place, we’ll be a few pages past the cow page and he’ll have a panic attack and shuffle through the pages to go back and find the cow. When he finds it he always says “cow?” as if he’s very concerned about the cow and wanted to make sure he was still okay.

He still watches Baby Einstein movies sometimes, and his favorite is Baby Shakespeare because it features a cow. He knows when that part comes on and starts saying cow before it comes on. He always wants to go back and keep watching that part, but I try to make him watch the whole thing so as to not become a slave to the DVD remote, constantly jumping forward or back to the cow part.

I was at the movie store the other day and I looked through the whole kids’ section for the best cow movie I could find, and I found Barnyard. We had watched it before with Emily, so I knew it features a cow as the main character and had dancing scenes. He laughs at the movie and likes it, but then of course gets concerned about the cow in the Baby Einsten movie or the cow in the book, so we have to go check on them.

I guess a cow obsession is okay with me. At least he’s not obsessed with fire or throwing golf balls through windows or anything. Yet. I hope we can go to a farm and see and touch a real cow as soon as spring comes – I think he would get a big kick out of that.

In other news, Kevin is doing much better now. He’s done with his steroids and we’re just doing breathing treatments whenever we think he needs them, maybe one a day. He’s still a little whiny and tired, but other than that he’s back to his funny, dancing, book-reading, demanding self. It’s nice to have that boy back.

Before he got sick, we went to a gathering in Iowa City for the Heart Friends group that we are part of. It was in recognition of Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Day, which is every Valentines day. It’s just another chance for us to visit with other families of kids born with heart defects – we usually see the same people once or twice a year at gatherings. It’s always good to see kids growing and thriving, and not always being able to pick out the “heart kids” from the “normal kids”.

Kevin had a good time playing in the gym with all the basketballs and the other kids. He spent a lot of the time keeping an eye on the big bird that was roaming around. He never wanted to get close to him, but he did end up giving him five and playing catch from a long distance.

 

Finally, Kevin had a great time eating the cupcakes and cookies that we had around for Valentines day, so I had to post some of those pictures…