CAREGIVER NOTE:
Not the best of nights — up 3 times with vivid dreams. Dream 1: Looking for car horns under his bed and out the window. Dream 2: Good times with old friends. Lots of laughter and joy and in good spirits. Dream 3: Playing a game, but lost the ball and no one could find it. Again looking under the bed and all around the room. He’d fixed the bed so you couldn’t tell he was out of it. UGH! He also thought he was somewhere else and wanted to go home and to his own room. He’s slept well since 2 am, thankfully.

POSITIVES:
He enjoyed phone calls with two of his sons
In good spirits most of the day
Enjoyed a “linger longer” conversation at the dinner table again last evening

CAREGIVER NOTES:
We had a pretty good day after a bumpy night. He’s given up on the computer and his games. He is frustrated pretty easily at this point. Hoping for a good day today. It will be a no news sort of day — I can definitely live with that.

POSITIVES:
He took a walk — soaked up a little sun
Watched a football game until the end (which he rarely does)
No diving into rabbit holes while talking about a memory from more than 70 years ago

CAREGIVER NOTES:

We spent a little time outside yesterday — not much because it was rather warm, but he marveled at the color of blue in the cloudless sky. He did notice that the mountains had more color – reds, oranges and golds against the dark green of the pines and cedars.

He’s still fixated on something he sees as a problem — he had another “visit” with his uncle yesterday afternoon and he brought it up in our afternoon conversation for the second day in a row. The problem is worrisome to him and we haven’t found the right words to help him resolve it in his mind. Maybe today will be the day. Fingers crossed.

POSITIVES:
He was excited to hear that we were having ribs for dinner ( it is his favorite) and literally cleaned his plate.
Smiles in the morning – laughter before bed
No malfunctions in the bathroom yesterday! I’m not sure who was more happy about that — him or me!

CAREGIVER NOTE:

He walked out the front door yesterday, if I hadn’t heard the door catch…..he might have gotten much further before I noticed he was missing – I was able to catch up with him just as he made it to the bottom of the ramp. By the time we walked back from the neighbor’s driveway, he was complaining about his hip hurting. His gait is more of a shuffle now. He still refuses to use the walker as a help. He needed help with his bedtime routine last evening — terribly confused.

POSITIVES:
He was conversational for a good part of the day and into the evening
He was really gentle with the dog and showed genuine concern about her incision site and making sure she was okay through the day
He enjoyed watching a show of his choice after dinner and seemed really drawn into it for a while, asking questions and responding so some of what was going on.

Hoping each sunset you take time to see takes your breath away and reminds you of the gifts you’ve received that day.

Watch for the blessings you receive throughout your day.

CAREGIVER NOTE:
Lots of stories last evening… lots of mingling of details, but he was talking and sharing and contributing to a multi-hour conversation. It all started when we were sharing a story about the importance of an education and how different that was for some people. He went into a lot of details of some of his experiences — very interesting. He didn’t attend college, but all of his sons did and most have advanced degrees in their engineering, medical and other fields of expertise. It’s been fun to hear about his educational experiences — and how they impacted his life and that of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

CAREGIVER NOTE:

Another 3 am wake up – he was lost again and was knocking on his door. Thankfully, after a little bit, he was able to recognize things in his room that made it “his.” He spent another couple of hours earlier in the day being worried about things on the “farm.” He shared several of the stories from the day before again and then needed to make a call to one of the boys. Once that was handled, he wasn’t so worried again.

He chose to binge watch a whole season of Finding Your Roots last evening. He really enjoyed it and wasn’t ready to call it a day until the credits of the last episode rolled through.