Dana being a good girl and helping me wash the car so it's "clean" when Dad gets home. Look how nice and show-room shiny it is! That said, it's probably going to rain tonight or tomorrow. And wouldn't you know it but soon as I went back in the garage to put the bucket and sponges away, I come back to find a bird dropped a load on the hood. Ha ha. Very funny. Not. I guess it could have been worse. It could have been an elephant. Just you watch, bird. Karma's a *bleep*... there's a whole family of red-tailed hawks living in the trees around. You may have just earned yourself a step closer to a beak. Actually her idea of helping when it comes to jobs like this is standing there while Dad or I do the actual work and she... I guess you could say she's the cheer leading squad. "Wow! Great job!" Every little bit helps.

Sometimes I hear Alex getting very frustrated with the computer upstairs. I try to listen to the tone of his frustration and intervene when I know it's just going to push him over the edge. But I wait because more and more of the time, instead of remaining a screaming mess, now he comes downstairs to get help. And I make him say what it is he wants even though I know what it is. Yanking on the nearest adult's arm is no longer an option for someone I know can talk. This time I was under the dining room table picking up some pens I'd dropped. He came into the room, crawled under towards me, sat down and tried to pull me out from under the table.
"Walking."
"Walking where?"
"Come."
"Not until you tell me where we're going and what you want."
He lets out a shriek of protest.
"No. Talk. Tell me."
He yells.
"No. What do you want? Use your words."
He takes a deep breath, lower lip out in a pout and wiping crocodile tears from his eyes,
"Sit down... upstairs computer."
"You need help?"
"Help... yes."
Then I took his hand and we went upstairs. Incomprehensible shrieks are not a communications option.

As for You Tube...
My brother Carl said, "You know, I can understand why Alex would go through and watch 1,800 or so videos on You Tube on flushing toilets. What makes it really insane is that there are hundreds of people out there, all over the world, who spent a not-small amount of time with a cam corder pointed at toilets just to film them being flushed, flushing different items, length of time on a flush, the weakness and strength of a flush, flushing toilets from different countries, northern and southern hemispheres..."

Absolutely mind boggling.