Who's The Boss?

I've been derelict of my posting the past two days. I know it, but conditions just were not conducive to my posting. Yesterday, I was really, REALLY tired all day because a certain little boy had me up way late and when I figured I could catch a couple catnaps during the day, about the time I would just doze off the darned phone would ring and wake me up. So, as a result, I was about in a zombie state by 8 p.m. last night when I wandered off to my room to lay down and didn't get up till 4 a.m. this morning! No, I didn't sleep soundly that entire time -did wake up now and again -but as none of those little "wake-ups" necessitated my getting up and out of bed to go to the bathroom, I was able to go right back to sleep so in essence, I got myself the most sleep over a stretch of time that I've been lucky enough to get in a long, long time!

The past two days, the 16-year-old has been home from school, sick. Apparently the flu as she's been complaining that she just aches all over and she has a cough as well. I tried to tell her this morning to take some of the Mucinex DM as it worked really well for me breaking up a bad cough but she explained to me that her cough was just very dry is all. Hmmm. You coulda fooled me! When she does start to cough, it sounded pretty doggone croupy to my old ears. I don't think she has a clue what a dry cough is as opposed to one that is "productive." This is the same person who can't tell chicken from roast beef from pork roast or pork chops, ya know. I think maybe link sausage is probably the only meat she is able to identify so I'm not gonna believe that her cough is "dry" after what I heard when she was hacking away.

Kurtis is currently doing the nocturnal thing again tonight - running around the living room here now -yes, at 2:12 a.m., he's up and ripping and tearing. Mandy and I are both hoping he will soon run out of steam.

This wasn't Kurtis tonight - it's a little video that Kate (the 16-year-old) took of him right after Christmas with HER new digital camera that she got for her birthday. When it comes to that kind of technology, that kid is way, way, WAY ahead of me! This was one of her first tries at doing a video so it's a bit on the dark side, but you can see he was a "moving and a grooving" that night -and he moves even faster now!

Little Miss Maya has learned a few new things lately too - some additions to her vocabulary as a matter of fact. Much as I am happy to see she's acquiring new words, there are a few things she's picked up of late that I think we're gonna have to put a little clamp on her -actually, on us, and the things we say around her here.

Take tonight for example - she was out in the kitchen messing around - not usually a good thing for her to be out there when no one else is there too -and I was after her, telling her she needed to come into the living room. And she was being her normal ornery little self and paying not a lick of attention to my commands. So I told her she'd best get in her and do it now cause she didn't want me to come out there and get her. Same response - she stayed put in the kitchen. I got up and began heading out there and when she saw me coming she took whatever it was she had in her hand and threw it and then, threw herself down on the floor in front of me, kicking and hollering at me "Leave me alone, ya goof!"

Yep, that's exactly what she said - what she called me! And I know exactly where she learned that too as Mandy and I both have a tendency when she does some things that aren't exactly what we want, we do use that word to her - along with a few other terms of endearment -turkey, goober, stinker, etc.

I had a little heart-to-heart chit-chat with her then - asking her who is the boss here anyway and her response to that, honest enough that it was, "Maya!" I promptly told her she was very misguided in her beliefs there because Grammy is the boss here! (No I didn't say she was misguided, but I did tell her that I. Am. The. Boss. GRAMMY is the boss, not Maya!

She wasn't overly happy with me as I gently led her into the living room but she didn't have a mega meltdown on me and plopped her little butt on the sofa where she sat quietly, looking at a couple of her books and within about 10 minutes max, she had curled up and fallen asleep on the couch.

When Mandy came home about an hour after all this took place, she went to get Maya off the couch to take her up to her bed and Maya woke up. At first she was being agreeable to going to bed, then she started to whine a bit and Mandy put her foot down -said she had to go up to bed then and to give Gram a hug and kiss good night. At first she protested some more but then finally, she came over to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss and said "nite-nite, Gram." As she headed towards the stairs with her mother, I called out to her and asked "Maya, who's the boss here?"

Her answer: "Gram."

For one night now anyway, I won one little battle but the war, I fear, has just begun.