I’ve learned that predicting what Kate will be like from one day to the next is far from easy. That is not to say she has bad days. If any day has been a bad one, it would be one of the days she has slept/rested until late in the day. I would call those bad because they were so far from her happy times.
I was hoping that Saturday might be another day like Friday. I got my wish. She woke up in a good mood. Everything was fine. Unlike the day before, she was up before 8:00. That meant another time I was able to fix her breakfast and sit with her while I drank my coffee. Despite the fact that it interrupts my normal routine, I enjoy this time with her.
Both days, she was unusually childlike. Saturday morning, she asked permission or approval of just about everything she did. It started with the bathroom. That isn’t unusual. It is normal. A couple of weeks ago as she was about to sit on the toilet, she said, “You’ll have to tell me what to do. This is the first time I have ever done this.” Her seeking permission continued throughout breakfast and the balance of the day. She preceded almost every sip of juice and every bite of her fruit and cheese toast by asking if it was all right to do so. Although I have considered the possibility that she is worried about getting my approval, I think it is more likely that she does this because she is uncertain of what to do. She expresses that in many ways almost every day, but it was especially noticeable that day.
After breakfast, she rested a while and then spent some time looking through one of her photo books before lunch. She was very interested. I was glad to see that because she hasn’t been as enthusiastic recently. Like the day before, it was a day of simple pleasures. We interspersed moments with photo books with periods of rest. It was a very pleasant day.
That changed a bit after her last rest in the afternoon. I got out the “Big Sister” album and began by pointing out the cover photo of her and her brother. I immediately met resistance when she made it clear that she and her brother were not in the picture. She didn’t know who they were, but she was confident they were some other children. I flipped through a number of other pages, and she responded the same way about pictures of her mother and father. She wasn’t interested in going further.
The rest of the day went well. As I got into bed that night, I got a reminder of the difference between her rational and intuitive knowledge of me. She is almost always awake and glad to see me when I get in bed. That was especially so that night. She had a beautiful smile on her face. Then she asked, “What is your name?”
