Brian’s Brain

I took Alex to Gasworks Park on Sunday. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. It was freezing cold and blustery. Of course, Alex didn’t seem to mind. The kid is impervious to cold. (Although he doesn’t like wind. Once I carried him outside on a windy day and he said, “Owie eye.”)

The flight back to Seattle went better than we expected. While the new portable DVD player only kept his attention for 15 or 20 minutes, overall he was a happier and more well-behaved kid on both flights.

I’m glad we stayed in the airport hotel, too. Catching our 7AM flight was much easier because we’d returned the rental car the night before and we were just minutes away from the terminal.

When we were getting Alex ready for bed on Friday night, though, we had an interesting experience. He was playing with the hotel phone by himself as Molly & I unpacked, and saying something over and over (and over and over) again that we couldn’t figure out at first. It sounded like “Abey-owd.” After a while, I realized what he was saying is, “Airplane loud.” This is something he said to me when we got off the airplane to start our trip, too. Molly pointed out that the way he was saying it over and over again made him sound mildly autistic, and I have to admit that the memories I have of Dustin Hoffman refusing to get on an airplane match Alex’s strange obsession with “Airplane loud.”

Unlike Rainman, Alex never seems bothered by things being loud, but he sure focuses on it after the fact. Earlier today, Molly took Alex over to his friend Asher’s house. Asher’s dad was baking and managed to set off the smoke alarm. And for several minutes afterwards, apparently all he talked about was “loud.”

The pictures from our holiday trip are now on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdewey/sets/72157603657637117/

Or you can view them as a slide show here:

View as slideshow

It’ll take a little longer to provide color commentary to the pictures, but I’m posting what I have now to avoid hate-mail from relatives on Monday morning if nothing’s been posted!