The other day, David, who is almost 13, started watching several "Little Bear" episodes on tape. Little Bear is age-appropriate for 3-5 year olds. He also pulled out a Wiggles video! We asked him why, and he declared that he "must be reverting to my childhood."

Mikey has fixated on a feature on the Sleeping Beauty video disk #2. It is a walkthrough of the Sleeping Beauty castle. He watches it over and over, and looks up similar videos on You Tube. This has supplanted the more recent fixations with "The Lion King on Broadway" You Tubes and the "Journey through the Grand Canyon and Medieval World" from the Disney train ride. I wonder what will be next.

Speaking of Mikey, he has learned it is appropriate to greet someone when you see them for the first time in a day. "Good Morning, Mother." "Hello, Grandma."

He does this rather quickly then goes off, again rather quickly, to pursue his own interests. His Mom said that, one day when - hm, I'm not sure if it was on the bus ride home from school or a day when Mom went to the classroom - at any rate, someone in authority reminded Mikey to "say hello to your parent."

"Hello, Parent!" he said.

Mikey does continue to make improvements. However there are some core issues. One is that, when things don't go his way, he sometimes throws a tantrum. He'll flop on the floor and scream and do the hit-his-head-with-one-hand and bite-the-fleshy-skin-over-his-thumb with the other. AND he kicks. It takes 2 of us now to control it.

The one thing that is more scary is that he cannot tolerate a person crying, including babies. If David cries, Mikey will cry and hit him. You have to watch him very carefully at a park; where normally he ignores other kids, this is the one time he'll attempt to connect with them.

David is doing very well in math. The past several concepts, save one, have come to him rather easily. He will probably finish the pre-algebra course a couple of weeks from now. We'll be able to start the following year's math before this year is out. Heaven knows what Grandma will have to brush up on to keep helping him.

Also, how creative I'll need to be. This past year we have "MARCH to the Other Side and Change The Sign" and "Group the Troups Together." It's tough to "literalize" abstract concepts and I expect it will get tougher. It is very rewarding and not terribly infrequent for David to turn to me and say, "Thank you, Grandma, for explaining that to me."