Karl, the kids and I went to my in-laws’ cottage this past weekend, something we’ve taken to doing a fair amount these past few summers. It’s a great cottage with lots of room to sleep, a fair size kitchen, electricity and satellite tv. The one hitch is that it’s a water access only cottage which means that once we arrive, Liam has to ride it out the whole weekend. So after a somewhat long day of getting some work in at the desk, buying groceries for the weekend and packing us all up, Karl and I manage to get out the door by 3:30pm and make our way over to the kids’ day camps. We pick Jacob up first and by the time we get to the school hosting Liam’s camp, we are running a few minutes late. Liam is sitting out front with a worker, waiting for us. As we pull up to the school, he spots the boat attached to the back of our truck and runs away as fast as he can in the opposite direction. You see, Liam has a love/hate relationship with the cottage. On the one hand, he knows he’s going to get sugar coated cereals, bonfires with junk food and swimming but on the other he will not be at home, his comfort zone. Anyway, Jake and I cracked up laughing as Karl ran after him. He just looked so cute with his pack sack on running as fast as his legs could carry him.

Yesterday morning, Liam left to go camping again, this time with a group of workers and special needs kids. When I woke up that morning, I hadn’t packed his clothes yet so he took it upon himself to go get his suitcase and start the process. He wrote out a little story on the computer about what he would be doing while he was camping. These stories are really special because of the sentences he is able to put together. The spelling and grammar may not be perfect but he is able to get his thoughts across in sentence format. Here is what he wrote about his upcoming trip:

Going to Camp

So Janefer and Liam.C Are going to the Camping trip where gona have Supper and you have a BonFire and we could go to sleep in the Camp and then we could have Breakfast and Go for a Walk to the Forest but Treehouse is Broken we could watch movies in the Camp but first Lunch and Supper and then we could watch a Movie and then we could go to bed then I could have Breakfast and then we could go Home.

He can be quite obsessive when waiting to go somewhere and I think writing about it helps to calm him down. A written story helps Liam to photograph the event in his mind, thus making it exciting for him. The trick is not to have him imagine it too early in the week or day because you will never hear the end of it. I’ve had Liam follow me around for hours and hours when, for example, a pizza will be ordered for supper or when we are supposed to go out for dinner. The pizza/restaurant could be five hours away but he will ask me repeatedly about it throughout the day. Ah yes, it is very fortunate that my son is cute.