Brothers

It would be no exaggeration to say that Wesley worships the ground that Zach walks on.  Wherever Zach goes, Wesley follows. Whatever Zach does, Wesley wants to do.  And whenever Zach invites Wesley to join him in an activity, Wesley is filled with excitement.  As Wesley follows in his brother's footsteps, it's pretty clear that he thinks Zach is the coolest big brother ever!

On the other hand, Zach has not always had this same affection toward his younger brother.  So it has been a joy for me to see recent changes in his heart toward Wesley.  Over the past two weeks I have had multiple opportunities to catch Zach's brotherly love in action.

For Christmas, Wesley's ST gave both boys kazoos (I know, the bane of my existence!), which they have LOVED!  At first Wesley didn't have any interest in them, but over time, as Zach played them with exuberance and joy for days on end, Wesley started to realize that these things really are tons of fun.  So he finally gave them a try.  Of course, he doesn't play the kazoo in the right spot, but thankfully it still works for him.  Now the boys regularly form their own little band, running through the house with Zach leading the way and Wesley following close behind.

Last week we had a free morning, and instead of running errands I decided to have family play/therapy time.  It was such a delight for me to watch as Zach excitedly explained everything to Wesley and cheerfully encouraged him at each step along the way.

Here Zach is helping Wesley sign "more" and say "go" while playing with Wesley's wind-up frog.

Wesley loved watching as Zach wound up his frog over and over and over again.

Then we worked on helping Wesley with his fine motor skills as he practiced putting coins into his piggy bank.  Zach was SO encouraging to his little brother.  He kept switching into his sweet, soft voice that he uses with Wesley and saying things like "good job Wesley" and "keep trying Wesley, you can do it".  In fact, with all of Zach's sweet encouragement, Wesley actually learned how to put the coins into the pig all by himself!  This is a HUGE accomplishment for him, as he still has a lot of difficulty with his fine motor skills and his pincer grasp.  And when he succeeded, Zach cheered and cheered for him!

An extra special moment occurred last Wednesday when I asked Zach to play with Wesley for a few minutes while I cleaned up before Wesley's DT arrived.  Zach got so excited and ran around collecting Wesley's favorite toys.  Then I heard him grab a few of Wesley's picture cards.  So I peeked around the corner to watch as he showed Wesley two picture cards and said, "Wesley, do you want your drum or your ball?  Yay, you picked your ball.  Great job Wesley.  Here you go, here's your ball!"  Then, he grabbed Wesley's Itsy Bitsy Spider picture card and said, "Wesley, do you want your drum or do you want Itsy Bitsy Spider?"  Of course, Wesley picked for Zach to sing to him, and thankfully I had the camera there to catch the song on video.

We learned early on that Wesley disliked cold foods, so ice cream and popsicles were out of the question.  But just last week Mike offered him a popsicle and Wesley loved it!  So this week when I gave Zach the last popsicle after lunch one day and then saw Wesley running toward him with his "I want some of that too" scream, I knew I was in big trouble.  But much to my surprise, instead I saw this:

It is such a joy to watch my boys playing together and loving each other!

Thank you Lord for blessing each of my boys with a brother!