Santa Monica

Sometimes it’s easy to forget why we live in LA. Today we remembered.

We spent the day at the Santa Monica beach with one of my best friends who flew from New York to meet Belle. We had a GREAT time! Nathan is 95% healed – other than a wet cough he is doing very well. And Belle…she got to hear the roar of the waves and smell the salty air and feel the scratchy softness of the sand on her hands and feet.

We threw Nathan’s diet to the winds and gave him whatever he wanted to eat – and eat and eat and eat he did. He’s making up for lost time and eating everything in sight. I hope it’s only a matter of time until there’s some meat on that cute skinny sack of bones. He went on a few rides at the santa monica pier, played in the arcade with his daddy, and squeaked and squealed at the chaos around him.

On the ride home I looked back and saw Nathan with his hand resting on Allyson’s thigh. He had his mischievious glimmer in his eye….I could almost hear him smugly thinking, look at me I’ve got my hand on the pretty girl (Allyson is a hottie!!). What a boy he is!

As we were riding home Allyson was asking me about Nathan’s development and asked me how much he understood. I told her I feel he understands a lot but it’s hard to know because he has so many physical limitations that limit his ability to show us what he does or doesn’t understand. Stepping into her teacher mode, Allyson started playing with him and asked him to help her count the trucks that went by. Nathan looked right out the window. He understood exactly what we said and decided to follow a command!

All this time he had his hand on her thigh…so she asked him to touch his own knee. He immediately moved his hand and touched his thigh (he couldn’t quite reach his knee). Then she asked him to touch her thigh again. Boy did he smile when she asked him to do that! And he touched her thigh again. They went back and forth several times until I pulled out the camera and he decided it was time to stop.

We made it home and finished the day by jumping in the spa. Nathan couldn’t stay awake any longer so he went to sleep. But Belle thinks she’s 2 months going on 20 years old and decided to stay awake and go into the spa with us. She kicked and played in the water for a good 30 minutes before she finally gave in to sleep.

Life is so good.