Feeding Ducks/Making Friends

You know, as a parent, you always hope and want the best for your children. It has been sad for me to see Howie want friends and not have any to play with. Soon Olivia will be big enough for them to pal around with but that is a little way off. There have been times when I have taken Howie to places where he could have played with other children and not for any lack on Howie's part for trying, but the others snubbed him and wouldn't play with him. I thought that all children had no indifference to each other and would just instantly start playing. We have been at our ward activities, parks, parties, etc. and Howie would ask the other children, "you want to play?" to which he is told NO or GO AWAY. It is the saddest thing to see your child just want to innocently play with the other kids and have no one to play with.

Today was a first; a different experience. We went to a park for a picnic lunch. When we got there, Tommy found a tarantula spider and immediately picked it up. All of the kids at the park said, "wow, cool" and all of the mom's were freaking out. Tommy placed the spider in a safe place, because as Tommy put it, "spiders are not safe around Tara" (could be refering to me killing the last tarantula outside our house), and then some of the kids asked Howie if he wanted to play. Within minutes, they were calling each other "friends". On little boy (later identified as Charlie) came over to our table and Tommy asked if he was looking for the spider. He said, "no, I am looking for my friend". That melted our hearts. Finally, a good experience where Howie can play with others with no barriers. We even had such a great day at the park meeting new friends, we got Charlie and Tommy's mom's name-Jenny-and chatted a while, discovering that her husband is also in the nursing program and doing so many of the same things Tommy has done/will be doing. Howie also met a girl named Sage and played with her and the boys. When Tommy was leaving and told Howie that we had gotten Charlie and Tommy's mom's name and phone number so that we could play again, Howie said, "please get Sage's phone number too." Sage's mom started laughing lots; she said he was a little young to be hitting on the girls. It was a pleasant afternoon. I am still happy about our afternoon. Tommy joked he needs to take a spider every time to a park as an ice breaker.

My, what a little kindness can do.

Oh, I almost forgot. We also fed the park ducks today. We decided after the attack ducks were not full that it would be wise to change locations before bringing out our lunches to eat. So then we changed parks. However, the ducks, swans, and pelican were way cool.

We had some very old stale cheerios that we graciously shared with them. I think the highlight was the pelican. It was neat to just watch it and the way it dipped it’s beak into the water to scoop up food. We were even lucky to see it scoop up a goldfish, swallow it down and see the goldfish not give up and fight its way back up to the beak, only to be swallowed down again. It was pretty neat! Tommy got pecked at four times and that is when we decided eating lunch here would not be a good idea. We then switched to the park where Howie made some friends.