Weekend Activities 9/14/08

From Sarah: Yesterday we celebrated Curt's birthday with a little family get together. He got to eat ice cream cake, cream cheese brownies and orange soda. He also enjoyed opening his presents. It was so awesome to watch him read his birthday cards. And, it was great to see his sense of humor come out. From time to time Hanna would help him out, and at one point Curtis read a card that said "happy birthday." He then said, "I don't get it." When Hanna started to explain, Uncle Curtis said, "just kidding" and laughed. He was totally messing with Hanna!

Observations from Anna, Renee's college roommate:
This weekend has been my first opportunity to see Curtis in person. I've kept up with this blog and spoken with Renee frequently since the end of June but it's been amazing to see Curtis for myself for the past two days. Reading and hearing about his progress is absolutely no comparison to seeing him in person. There are moments when Curtis' personality shines through clearly and when I see him in those moments, we could easily be sitting around the kitchen table in his mom's house, laughing and having a good time. He is very engaging, observing everyone, listening to conversations and answering questions that are directed specifically at him. I've watched him do some many activities in such a short time period -- it has been very inspiring to see how hard he is working. It's also been exciting to watch him eat real food -- you can tell he thoroughly loves that he's eating and for someone who just got the clear to begin eating within the last week, he is a very neat, coordinated eater! He got to have snacks of pudding and more ice cream cake in between meals and he really loves that cake! Tonight, we played Uno with him. His nephew put down a Wild card and asked Curtis (who only had 3 cards left) what color he wanted. Curtis replied back with, "What color do you want me to want?" with an impish expression on his face. This banter went back and forth for a few rounds before Bo picked blue. Curtis grinned and showed us his hand -- 3 red cards!! It didn't matter though -- Curt managed to beat most of us anyway. This will be one of the memories that stays with me long after this weekend trip is over. There are many more memories I'll carry with me as well, but this is a short sampling.

From Renee: These past two days here have been wonderful! It seems that Rancho has a lot of plans for Curtis, and they expect him to make some good progress rapidly. I think he will, too! Today, Tammy and Elaine pulled up some multiplication problems on a computer website and challenged Curtis with them. He was able to do all of the single digit muliplications, and with help, he could also do a couple of double digit multiplications. I asked him if he could write on a piece of paper, and he wrote on paper "chris, green, renee and elaine". I also asked him to write the number of the age that he is, which he wrote "34" (I reminded him he just had a birthday and so he wrote 35), but he wrote several other numbers for me. I asked him to spell his own name and the name of Tammy, and he was able to do that! Plus, Elaine asked him to recall his social security number, and he accurately rattled it off for her! I am just so happy to know that he still has these skills.

Today we were visiting outside, and Curtis wanted to stand up and walk! So, with just a little bit of help from us, he stood up and walked many steps outside under the big California sky! I asked him how it felt to be walking outside and he said "it feels really good!"