Little Musician

Before I forget, the first thing I am posting in the entry this morning is the "Bushism" for Sat/Sun January 13/14. Ready or not, here it is!

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the internet." (Arlington Heights, Illinois; October 24, 2000.)

Boy, there's a mouthful of crapola if ever I read/heard one! Good news from GWB - "life is important!" No duh! But children living in the dungeons of the internet? WTF is that all about anyway?

Ok - got that off my chest for the moment anyway.

I really just wanted to share a few little bits and pieces of some things Miss Maya, my little Muffet granddaughter here has been learning recently. She tends to give us at least one surprise a day of late - or so it seems - as we see her doing something new, differently, speaking more, comprehending much more! And boy, is that ever a good thing to see and hear coming from her too! A year ago, I was worried we'd never see some of these things happening with her as her attention span was about that of a gnat it seemed at times. You would have had a very difficult time then just trying to get her to make eye contact with you for maybe 30 seconds and it would be gone and she would be angry, frustrated, screaming. Today, she still has some issues with the attention-span and now and again, the eye contact thing but oh my, not anything like they were last year!

During the month of December, in my meager attempt to give myself a little Christmas spirit as well as trying to teach her something too, she and I frequently "worked" on her trying to learn some little songs or ditty type stuff. And I'm happy to say that in addition to being able to sing (her versions of all of these of course) "Happy Birthday" she can now sing "Twinkle, Twinkle little star," "Jingle Bells" and also was learning to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" too! Amazing! Well to me, to her parents too, it is!

Last Monday, when Mandy had gone shopping- had Maya with her - Miss Muffet spied two toy guitars and really got a big fixation for them. Mandy decided to let her chose which one she wanted and she came home with this little plastic guitar - blue and red - fake strings of course - and it plays a couple of tunes. Ok, fine! Well, to our surprise, Maya plays with this guitar in a couple different ways. One is that she will hold it just like you are supposed to hold a guitar and pulls her fingers over the plastic strings, just the way you are supposed to do when strumming a guitar! Now, how did she learn that or know it almost on her own anyway? On other occasions though, she will put the end of the guitar up under her chin, positioning it the way one would do with a violin and then, using whatever she finds handy - a pencil, a straw, anything that she can use to pull across those fake strings in movements looking just like she is trying to play a violin. And, what was more surprising than that too - to me - was that in doing that she would look at me and say "Violin? Violin?" Yes baby, looks like you are trying to play a violin alright but where did you learn that pose, how to hold a violin, how to imitate someone pulling a bow over violin strings? Where the heck did you see that?

But her latest thing - with respect to this guitar - is that she will stand in the middle of the room, holding it like she is going to play some song, start moving her hands across the strings in strumming fashion and then she starts to "sing" - sometimes it is one of the little ditty songs she has learned but other times it is just garbled stuff that she is "singing her own song" there, all the while, she is dancing around, bobbing up and down with the guitar so as to bend over and let the far end of the guitar touch the floor, then spin around, bend backwards like a singer crooning a tune and the whole procedure looks like she is auditioning for American Idol or some video taping or some such thing! Too darned funny for words to watch some times though! And, my cousin Ray is reminding me to make sure to catch these things with the vidio camera too some day! Oh yes, something definitely good there to have for posterity for the family to watch years from now and laugh about what a little show-off she is becoming!

Thursday evening, Mandy was struggling with Maya, trying to get her to pick up her toys and cards she had strew all over the living room floor - and not having all that much success at the time either. So, Mandy turned the TV off in order to have no other distracting elements there to keep Maya from listening to her and picking her stuff up. She did then follow through a little bit, got a lot of the stuff picked up anyway and Mandy turned the tv back on.

Just when the tv came back on, it was a scene from the NBC program "The Office" and Michael, the office manager was the main character on the screen. Maya took one look at that and said "Office. Office." I looked at Mandy, dumbfounded and asked her "Did she just say what I think she said?" To which Mandy replied, "Yep Mom! She said "Office." Now how amazing is that for her to recognize the name of a program that I know she doesn't pay any attention to when it is on but yet, she had learned that was the name of the show and the actor who portrays Michael - can't remember his name - she associated his face with the name of the program!

A year ago, you would never have been able to get Maya to give a hug, kiss, blow a kiss or even really show any type of recognition or affection. Now, she is a completely different child - ask for a hug - she might come running up to you or whoever made the request and give a hug or she might instead say "Gracie, big hug" and go looking for the cat to hug her and after that, make her way around to everyone else present, usually calling this or that person by name and adding to that her statement, "A big, big hug!" and reach up and give hugs, sometimes she will even give out kisses then too. Other times she will simply hug and then say "noses" and you then have to rub noses with her. And boy, do I cherish those moments when she displays affection that way!

The only person she RARELY offers to hug though -poor little Kurtis! And he, watching her like a hawk, follows her every movement it seems, with his eyes just sparkling and laughing heartily too at so many of her actions. It is really obvious how much he adores, idolizes his big sister at this stage of his life and she, well she pretty much still ignores him! I guess she is still in the if I ignore him he will go away phase but at least she isn't trying to beat up on him or anything like that!

The other night, she was in her high chair and apparently found nothing good about the meal I had cooked - have to admit it wasn't really very good as I had cooked shell macaronis but they had gotten way overcooked and when I mixed them with tuna and some mushroom soup and peas to make a pasta/tuna casserole, it really was not very appetizing - but she decided to take little blobs of this mush in her hand and casually was dropping it to the floor over the side of the high chair. I was sitting almost across from her high chair but somewhat at an angle, feeding Kurtis his bottle and concentrating on him, not paying a lick of attention to her until he stopped eating and began to really laugh - a big hearty chortle type laugh - and I looked to see what he was watching that he found so humorous and it was her dropping these blogs of mushy tuna/pasta casserole all over the floor!

You know that old adage -"One man's trash is another man's treasure." Well that sort of comes to mind there but Maya and Kurtis' idea of a "treasure" -dropping blobs of mushy food on the floor, didn't quite measure up the same way in my book! Grammy was quite, yes QUITE displeased!!!

That's just a couple of little things Maya has been doing, things she is picking up, learning unbeknownst to us too. Every day is so exciting now seeing how quickly she is mimicking us, the things she sees on tv, just so much coming through almost all at once it seems.

And I am definitely NOT complaining about that!

As my dear friend Shirley would remind me "If I'd know grandchildren were so much fun, I'd have had them first!" And boy, do I ever agree with that!

They are soooo much better, soooo much more fun than was the "first edition" - their parents! LOL Love you all, kids!