"Pafh -- Paa"

"Pafh -- Paa" means "bath crayons" in our house. Liam loves them. He's getting pretty good with a lot of words but there are some that are just hold overs from before he could reliably make as many sounds and "path -- paa" is one of them.

I'm not sure exactly where this interest came from, and I hope it's not too much of a projection of my own interests, but Liam is interested in whales. Lately we've been talking a lot about whales, especially "or-ca whaale"s. We've been looking at pictures and videos on the computer (warning: you have to preview these since lots feature the whales, well, tearing seals apart and stuff like that) and talking about how whales work. They breath air. They have a blow hole ("bwo hoe") that they breath through. They use their tails for swimming and their flippers for steering and turning. They talk with each other in a special language. They eat fish and other things that live in the ocean. Liam has an old plastic orca whale left over from, I think, my college days (it's always been around somewhere) and he has been swimming it in the bathtub. Today he informed me that orca whales don't eat fish, they eat, wait for it, "pafh -- paa." Of course.

Raining like the season has well and truly changed today. These are the strong, steady fall rains. They drop a lot of water and tell the fall migrating fish that it is time. . .time to move back into natal streams and find their ways home. The big, spotted chinook have already gone up; we saw them in the bay a few weeks ago jumping and trying to stay away from seals. Now it's time for the smaller more brightly colored chum that use the lower parts of the streams, almost spawning in the estuary in some places. This weekend or next I'll take Liam here to see them.

We're having up and down days, trying to take them as they come. Will has been on oxygen all week, but at a lower rate (2.5 L instead of 4) and has been really working at getting stronger. Today felt good enough and was saturating well enough to be without oxygen for most of the afternoon. (He'll use it for sleeping.) I think he's feeling a little better and certainly relieved to have at least some days when he doesn't need O2 all the time.