Family Time

This morning, my son-in-law left with a pal of his to go pick up a motor -or some such automotive item. The stepgranddaughter has been at her mother's place for the weekend and the two middle stepgrandhildren, who were supposed to be here today, ended up spending the entire weekend with their mother.
That left Mandy, the two little ones and me to do whatever struck our fancy today so we decided since the older daughter had invited us down to her house for dinner, to take her up on the offer.
It was, I must say, a very good meal she had prepared too - roast beef surrounded by chunks of potatoes and carrots in a nice gravy. Very well cooked, very tasty meal! Thanks again, Carrie for all your hard work.
My older grandson was with his mother (my older daughter) today so that made the visit doubly enjoyable as we don't get that many opportunities to see Alex since it is roughly close to an hour's drive to their place. He's such a gem! This evening, before we left, his Mom made him get out his trumpet and do his daily practice, figuring since Aunt Mandy and Grammy J were there, it would give us an opportunity too in which to observe how well he is doing with his lessons and practice. Sure, he's got a long way to go before he'll be soloist material but it is more than obvious how much effort he is putting into learning the ins and outs and what not to playing a trumpet. The first song of his repertoire got little Maya's attention immediately since it was the melody to one of the nursery rhymes she knows AND sings too! She went running out to the dining room and stood as close to Alex as she could, just watching him so rapt up in his playing a song she knew. Even began to sing the words (Twinkle, Twinkle) when he was almost through with his rendition.
Carrie and her fiance, Robert, have quite a menagerie at their house - four dogs (two are purebred cocker spanials - Jed and Emma; one is a purebred Golden Retriever - Cedar; and the fourth, still basically a puppie is my absolute favorite though - Ollie. Ollie is a mixed breed, black and white, chubby pretty little thing who just loves being around people.) In addition to the four dogs, they have a cat, Anna - that they allowed Alex to "adopt" last summer and who is supposed to be an "outdoor" cat but since she gave birth about four weeks ago to a litter of four kittens, all females no less, she is a "garage" cat now as they moved her inside shortly before the kittens arrived. The other cat they have is kind of our "family" cat as she was my son, Clayton's cat before he took this job driving tractor trailer. Since he is often away from his house for four-five days at a clip, there was no way he could keep the cat (Zoey) and his beloved Shepherd/Akita mix, Andrei, so Carrie and Robert adopted both of those animals. And, if you've been reading along in my blog over the past 4-5 months, you may remember that Andrei tragically died only two days after Carrie and Robert had adopted him.
Maya has a field day at Carrie and Robert's though with all the dogs and cats. Just loves them to pieces. Ollie, the puppy, is probably her favorite of all the dogs too but that is most likely because frequently when Carrie and Robert come up home for a day or for the evening, they like to bring Ollie along and Maya just loves to rip and tear around the house with her.
We took Maya's "big wheel" tricycle type bike along with us today since Carrie and Robert's driveway is paved, figuring she would enjoy riding her bike on that surface and be able to be outdoors. She isn't outside to play here very often because at her age, you can't just turn her loose to play out in the yard - it's not enclosed or gated or anything and she pays no attention to what instructions one might try to give her and has to have someone with her, paying close attention at all times to whatever she might be getting into.
She did enjoy riding the bike on the paved surface - for sure but she also discovered something else too. Part of their driveway slopes downhill and intersects then with the road in front of their house. Granted it's a country road and not heavily trafficked but it gets its fair share of vehicles going back and forth. Well, Maya soon realized if she rode the trike on that part of the drive, it would give the little bike a good bit of speed. Yes, we have a three-year-old with no fear and a lead foot apparently on the pedals! They had to curtail her bike riding because she was determined she was going to ride it down the drive as fast as she could go and none of the grown-ups would have been able to keep up with her to stop her from flying right out into the highway!
I know I have mentioned before that Maya has had a speech therapist working with her for close to two years now, along with a behavior/play therapist too. I've also stated before that although she has not yet had a full evaluation to determine if she is autistic or not, she has many markers that lead us to believe the diagnosis will end up being autism. One of the traits I've been told and read about pertaining to autism is that those children frequently "echo" what has been said to them. And boy, after dinner today, that really became quite evident too. Maya was not in an "eating" mood apparently because the only thing on her plate she paid any attention to at all was the ketchup Mandy had put there for her to dip her potatoes and meat into - using it as an enticement to try to get her to eat her dinner you know.
And, apparently several of us must have repeated the phrase "Try it, you try it." to her quite a few times because after dinner, while she was playing around in the living room, all of a sudden she just started saying "Try it. You try it." in response to just about any question we put to her! Apparently, that was the "phrase du jour" for Maya!
It was more than obvious how hard she had played today too when she was out like a light within five minutes after we left Carrie and Robert's house. And, when we got home and her Daddy came out to get her out of the car, she came in with no fussing, quickly -and fairly quietly too - allowed Mandy to get her ready for bed and by 9:30, she was upstairs, in her bed and all has been quiet on that front ever since! Ah, PEACE!
And now, I'm about ready to call it a day too. Since Clate is got home from his latest run late this afternoon but hasn't shown up down here this evening, I'm assuming he is off making his rounds, probably over in Clearfield and we won't see him till in the morning some time when he'll show up here to have coffee with me and recap a bit about his trip and other things in his life. So I'll close this with the Bushism for the day for Monday, April 30, 2007.

"The woman who knew that I had dyslexia --I never interviewed her." - Orange, California; September 15, 2000.

Hmmm - Dyslexia? Never heard that one about him before, did you?