It sometimes baffles me how much Alex knows, how smart he is, but will still do things that make absolutely no sense to me. He asks me to check the weather on the computer every morning, wants to know what to expect from the day. When I tell him it will be rainy he will say "And cloudy too, right? Because nimbus clouds make the rain." Or he will take an interest in a certain animal and want to know all about it, most recently skunks, and he told me they are nocturnal like raccoons and bats so we should be careful when we pull in our driveway at night.

Now maybe that is no big deal for a typical 10 year old, but with the odds that have been stacked against him from the very beginning, I am pretty impressed. So why doesn't this train of thought apply to everything? Like when he sneaks outside to play when he is not allowed to open the door without asking permission, especially today while I was helping the girls with homework and making dinner, and when I find him out front and walk towards him telling him to come in, he runs to the truck, gets in , and locks the door. Or when I tell him we are having homemade soup and bread for dinner and he throws himself on the floor screaming like a maniac because he wanted me to order Chinese food - all I wanted him to do was eat dinner, a healthy dinner, not scrub toilets. I know, I know, it comes with the territory, lots of unanswered questions, and lots of questionable behavior. The extremes can be , like I said, baffling.