Dennis vs the trike

So today was great weather... I was out in my shorts and a t-shirt while I could sneak time between meetings.  Dennis went out with Ashley and road bikes.  Dennis has this big boy trike from summer that he loves.  He's SO much stronger now with his legs, having no issue starting himself with the pedals, steering more smoothly, and just moving faster.  He went out of our cul de sac and when he was called back he decided to stand up and turn his trike around while straddling it.  He fell... which he does a lot but this time he was of course standing next to the steepest embankment in the neighborhood.  The neighbor actually ties a rope to the lawn mower and lowers it down.

So Dennis and the trike go tumbling down and he catches a rock in the eye at the bottom.  He's gonna have a good shiner tomorrow.

Dennis doesn't handle real hurt like this well.  The normal simple spills, needles at the doctor, etc are no issue at all.  I'm not sure how that behavior developed in Ukraine.  So Ashley helps him out of the gully and starts taking care of him.  Then he starts running to the other side of the cul de sac and part way up a driveway... no idea at all why, it is the neighbor's house.  When Ashley catches up to him and tells him to sit he falls on his back against the hill (intentionally) and then starts crying and refusing to be consoled.  At this point Ashley is trying to give him an ice pack and starts crying herself cause he won't let her help.  Through the tears she's trying to tell me it is the trike of death and needs to be destroyed... I'm quite sure he'll be back on it tomorrow.

When he cries like this it is kind of like when he's mad.  He doesn't want to be bothered or helped, he'll cover his eyes for hours, and just curl up into a ball.  I held him for quite some time but he wouldn't eat and I had to force feed him some medicine, water, and to use an ice pack.

This picture was actually after I got him to open up for a little while and his eye looks better than it is.  I tossed him in the shower and then jumped in to help him wash up.  After a while he found that amusing -- I'm sure me tickling him had something to do with it too.  He ended up back upset later after saying good night to mom... I'm sure he'll be fine by morning but will just look half raccoon.

The rest of this week was uneventful.  He can count to twelve... keep in mind he couldn't count past three in Russian.  He's starting to get the hang of red ("vred"), yellow ("chellow"), and blue which was the goal for the week.  I had been concerned he was red/green color blind as he wasn't very good at colors in Russian and in English everything was blue or pink... but I tested him with one of the online things and he was quick to point everything out.  Now that he's actually getting the colors we should be good.  I suspect some of this is that he's never been asked to learn before so it's taking him a while to understand how to learn, pay attention, and people will actually keep on him to tackle it.