Maya's Original Pictures

Maya was a busy little beaver tonight - playing fairly quietly here on the living room floor for the most part. I figured she was coloring -something as you all know by now she enjoys doing - but it wasn't until Mandy happened to look over at some of the papers Maya had put up on the coffee table that she realized exactly what Maya had been doing. For a change, it wasn't anything bad either but it sure did surprise the heck out of us!

I don't know how well you'll be able to make out what she has on here but I'll describe it for you. All of these stick drawings -and the printing of the names too -were done by Maya, all by herself -not a whit of help from anyone here! At the top, you'll see her rendition of herself -and her own name below it and to the side of that in the upper right-hand section, is her mother and "Mommy" is printed below that. She has "Gram" printed there twice but the picture in the middle at the bottom is her drawing of me. In the bottom left, with the name Jacob printed under it, is a drawing of one of the little boys in her school class. He also rides the mini-van to and from school with Maya. And in the middle of the page on the right hand side, that is supposed to be Kurtis and yes, she did try to print his name there too. That one takes a little doing to make out her spelling. I was going to just scan this into the computer but then I remembered the scanner had been weirding out on me a bit the last time I used it so I decided to make use of my lovely camera - especially so I could share this page with you of Maya's special artwork! We were all thoroughly amazed that she did that though. Had no idea she could write -and do such a good job too on spelling these names! Not bad at all for a four-year old now is it?

We have two things -both were gifts to Maya from a very special cousin of ours down in Virginia. One is this bunny-thing - it's actually a pillowcase for a standard sized pillow made of really soft fleece type fabric with this big bunny head attached to it - floppy ears and all. Maya loved having it in her playpen when she was a baby and often would play with the bunny head. We also have a pillow shaped like a teddy bear baby rug -also a gift to Maya when she was about 18 months old from that same special Virginia cousin. Mr. Bunny and Mr. Bear is what they are called here. Maya loved the bear pillow too but not near as much as Kurtis does!

He sometimes uses "Mr. Bear" as a pillow to rest his head on and other times, he pulls "Mr. Bear" close and hugs him and at times, he likes to pull "Mr. Bear" up so the pillow covers his head and eyes too. One of the little "issues" or quirks Kurtis has is that he will be two years old - a month from today, April 13th - but he refuses to relinquish the bottle. He's adamant in that he won't have anything at all to do with a sippy cup - no way, no how -and we can't try to wean him to an open topped cup because, you see, he will not hold a bottle and drink anything from a sitting position! He has to lay down to drink. This is a bit of a problem to the staff who run the WIC program here as they are insisting that Mandy wean him -NOW, but actually, should have been done YESTERDAY, in their books. We're very aware that he should have been weaned long ago but, what the WIC people DON'T take into consideration here is that he is also autistic and you don't just train these kids to do something new like that overnight - not even over months for that matter. That, plus he seems to be unable to lift things like that up to reach his mouth too. (Another reason he has an occupational therapist working with him too.)

But anyway, when he sees us coming with a bottle in hand, we like to describe his actions as being the "Stop, drop and roll" -like you learn to do in fire safety training and such. As soon as he sees someone bringing him that bottle, he stops whatever he's doing, drops to the floor of the playpen, gets his head arranged then usually on "Mr. Bear" for his pillow support and he's ready to go to town scarfing up whatever he's just been given then! Tonight, he was a busy little beaver, running all over the downstairs of the h0use here and Mandy had given him a bottle. He had "Mr. Bear" out of the playpen and had come into the living room and grabbed that furry pillow and took it to the kitchen where he laid it in front of the island. He then came back into the living room and removed one of the pillows from the loveseat and took it to the kitchen too -placing it on the floor alongside "mr. Bear." After he had that all set up, he then laid down on the floor with the pillow and "mr. Bear" and proceeded to polish off that bottle of milk.

Here's a picture of him with his own little "set-up" and Maya had to join him too!
And here are pictures of both of them - showing off how well they can each smile so pretty for the camera! Why is it though that it always seems little boys get blessed with a head full of curly, curly hair and little girls - usually it's just the reverse and they get the straight stuff?





And that's my post and mini picture show for tonight!

Enjoy! I am.