In One Ear...

Just a couple things to talk about this evening here.

This morning, Maya was up and moving around early. Not quite "with the chickens" but for her, 8 a.m. and awake is close enough to that. I had been hoping she would sleep a bit longer today -like till maybe 10 a.m. because Mandy had an appointment in town for Kurtis at 9 a.m. and I was afraid Maya might have a bit of a hissy fit what with Mandy leaving the house, taking Kurtis but not her along to the appointment.

Lucky for me, she was fine with Mandy leaving today.

We had a nice breakfast as each of us had a bowl of cereal. She requested "Golden Grahams" for her cereal du jour and I fixed her a smallish bowl of the substance. Usually, cereal is something that she will eat and clean the bowl completely so I was a bit surprised when today, she took maybe 5 or 6 bites and then, left the table, refusing to eat any more of it because she said "I don't like it." Hmmm. If you don't like it, why then did you ask for it, Miss Muffett? I know she's eaten it before but her tastebuds change like the wind and once she decides she doesn't like a particular food substance, even one she's always eaten quite well before and now says she doesn't like it, the best thing to do then is chalk that meal up for the day.

After breakfast, Maya was busy, playing with some of her toys for a while. Then, it got kind of quiet and soon I heard a kind of tapping sound coming from the dining room. Checking on her, I found her dabbling with her the box Mandy has stuff in that she is using to create Donation cans that we can place at different businesses and restaurants around the area to try to gather contributions for our team for the Autism Walk next month.

Mandy had different items -puzzle pieces, the special ribbon indicating autism, markers, glue and such in this container and there was Maya, with a couple of stars, fairly large ones, on the table and using one of those marker things you would use when playing Bingo, stamping each of these stars with that marker.

I put the markers away but she wouldn't relinquish the stars over to me so I ended up letting her have them to play with. But the next thing I know, she comes in the living room, heads over the the big bow window and gets up in the window sill and begins rubbing this piece that initially I thought was construction paper but was actually a rectangular piece of the foam type stuff like the stars she'd had are made of all over one of the window panes. And I could see from where I was sitting this was leaving a kind of thick white residue in its wake too. I told her she was going to have to clean off that window before her Mom got back home or else. So, she went and got some paper toweling and started to wipe this stuff and it sort of smeared some more only in a wider area. So I told her she needed to dampen the paper towel just a bit to clean the window and away she went to get more paper toweling but instead of dipping it into the pan of hot water I had in the sink, she announced to me that she needed to window cleaner and there she is, at the dining room table, with the bottle of windex spray there, squirting some of it on the paper towel. Well, at least, I thought, she knows that is what that stuff is supposed to be used for anyway.

About that time then, as she was rubbing her moistened paper towel on the window, Renee -Kurt's former TSS and now, his BSC, showed up. And when Renee went to put her bag on the table, she announced to me what Maya had been playing with originally that she had smeared on the window -Elmer's Glue! Wonderful.

Oh well, the windows needed washed anyway and now, they are nice and clean for maybe a day or two -if we are lucky!

Tonight, at supper, Katie, the stepgranddaughter was here and we were talking at the table about various things. Mandy informed Maya that peas just happen to be Katie's favorite vegetable and asked her if they were now maybe her favorite vegetable too since Katie had put a spoonful of peas on Maya's plate and she had eaten all of them before we even got the mashed potatoes or the roast pork on the table.

Maya's response though to the favorite vegetable question was one that really surprised the heck out of both Mandy and me -broccoli! Ok! I told Mandy we need to mark on the calender that today Maya announced broccoli to be her favorite vegetable and to show her that date on the calendar too. You see, she has a fixation with the calendar and dates -remembers all kinds of dates -people's birthdates, doctor appointments, both past and coming. If we write something on the calendar and she sees it, she reads it and seems to commit it all to memory, then and there. Of course, I was being a tad sarcastic -fascious if you will -in saying we should mark the broccoli thing on the calendar so as to point to that some day in the future when we have broccoli for supper and she most likely will tell us then "I don't like it!"

After supper, Mandy left to go to Clearfield to wait and see if any one happens to show up for a meeting of the Autism Support group she is trying to establish for people on this side of the mountain. Right now, there is nothing like this in our county so people wanting to attend a support group have to travel clear over to State College -which from where we live is 37 miles but for people who live in other areas in our county, this would mean a 60-70 mile trip one-way so she wants to try to get something set up that would be easier for folks here to attend.

When she left, Kurtis was still sitting at the table, eating. Shortly therafter, he pushed himself away from the table and announced that he was "Ah du" which translated, means "All done." So I asked him if he was really all done or did he want more to eat and I gave him the sign language -hitting bent finger knuckles together -meaning "more" and he responded to me with the sign language and also said "more." So I gave him a little dabble more of the mashed potatoes and he started to eat them.

By this time then, Maya had disappeared into the bathroom -which is not always a good sign as she likes to get into things in there too, ya know -so I went to check on her and by the time I came back out, I see Kurtis sitting there in his booster seat with the pepper shaker in hand and just busy as all get out, shaking pepper all over the place! So when I went to take that away from him I see that he had done more too. Seems the meat dish was just close enough for him to get a grasp on it and he had slid it over and removed almost all the meat left in it -that was to be for Bill for his supper -and he had put it in a heaping pile on his plate and then, liberally doused it with loads and loads of pepper!

Kids! Can't leave ANYTHING around them even for a minute, can you?

Tonight, while we were conversing at the table, there were several other things Maya said and did that I told myself I was going to be sure to remember and write about it in my post tonight. However I think I really need a memory stick now because when I went to write this post, I had a heck of a time even remembering this much of what crazy things Maya had said!

I sure do wish those things worked that way, ya know!

And now, I need to make a call to a young lady from our church who had been on our team last year for the walk and who had really gone great guns on pulling in the donations too so I can find out if she's going to participate again with us this year.

Always something, isn't it? But these little things sure do keep things hopping, makes life a bit more interesting anyway.