He can do this.

     Last night, Etienne, Ryan and I were in the bathroom, doing the bedtime thing.  E's ritual involves sitting for a long time on the toilet, than loading on all the layers of diapers, pads, night time pull-ups, etc, than double checking that his sheets have all their extra layers too.  It's a lot of work all while doing this, he is usually talking a mile a minute, totally not focused on the task at hand.  Oblivious to how exhausting and time consuming and frustrating these nightly routines are.
      However, last night, his incessant chatter paused and he said "I think my friends would laugh at me if they knew I had to wear all these diapers."  We immediately stopped what we were doing and plopped on the floor.  We told him that the only ones who know about the layers are his family; he said he knew his family didn't tease him.  We told him that he never got to be a baby that we got to rock, feed and change diapers and love on.  We told him that he had as much time as he needed to figure this out.  We told him it was okay to do this his own way.
       This morning he awoke, cheerful and yelling down the stairs "Daddy, I'm dry."  He wasn't.  He cried and he cried.  He said "I can't ever do this.  I can't do anything"  It broke my heart over and over with each tear.  As much as I told him he could do it and lots of other things, he couldn't really hear me.
Today at school they had a concert for Lutheran Education Week (or something along those lines!).  All the classes sang several songs and pounded on some drums.  Chimed a few triangles.  Than Dr. C, Etienne's piano teacher and the school's director of music, called Etienne up front.  This is what he did.

        Dr C told us a few weeks ago that he had realized that Etienne didn't understand a lot of the language or directions that he used.  So he quit the traditional methods and began teaching E how to identify notes on the scales and on the music.  Clearly. my little boy speaks music.  Clearly, he can do this
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