Fast Changing Scenes!

It really never ceases to amaze me how the scenes in this house can change about as rapidly as they do sometimes. One minute, kids are laughing, all happy and excited, the next not even minute, there is pandemonium. That can change back to happy in the blink of an eye and then, just as quickly, back to the pandemonium with lots of screaming, shrieking and crying too!

Let me give you a prime example of this type of event.

Kurtis today has been as near to angelic as he could possibly have been, considering his sister was present and she tends to be the one who needles him or hits him or pushes him or does something to set him off on a crying, screaming tangent.

Earlier this evening I asked him to pick up his matchbox cars and put them in their special case and with no argument whatsoever, he did exactly as he had been told/asked (you decide which word would best apply there.)

About the same time, I asked Maya to please pick up the papers and coloring books on the living room floor -since they all belonged to her and her response to that was the exact opposite of Kurt's! All I got out of her initially was a snippy flat out "NO!"

Ahem, little girl. If you do want to see tomorrow I would strongly recommend you change your attitude, your tone of voice, your choice of words there too. Well, with her, one can make threats, rant, rave, cajole, do whatever else you can think of to get her to cooperate and do that till the cows come home too and she won't budge!

Stubborn little so-and-so she is!

But eventually, though we had a semi-tearful discussion about who makes the rules and who abides by them she finally did pick up I think two books but she was still kind of grumbling about how she has her own rules too and they aren't the same as mine! So there!

And then, suddenly peace, quiet and pleasantness came over the house as Maya went to bed -early -around 9 p.m. However, her brother was still up. (Matter of fact, as I write this, he's still up and at 'em -awake and it's now 10:30 p.m. Yeah, he had a little nap earlier you see.)

Anyway, I was sitting at the computer, writing an e-mail to my cousin, the crazy, zany red-head, down in Austin, Texas and I was also sort of bragging to her about how good Kurtis had been today. I was also telling her about how cute it was when he came across this little wand-type thing and as he handed it to me, he said "I need help, Grammy." I got the gist of his request then -he wanted me to open this thing. Initially I wasn't all that sure what the heck it was but quickly realized it was a little bubble maker wand and the tube part of it had bubble solution in it and he wanted me to open it and make some bubbles for him.

No problem! Grammy the wonder woman is on call here tonight and I was happy to oblige his request.

Took the wand out and saw that it held a dabble of the bubble fluid and with a merry wave, and a cry of "Presto, Magic" from me, there was a nice little bubble wafting by my computer screen. And there beside me too was a little boy, not just all smiles but smiles and doing belly laughs too as he watched with such glee as I made these bubbles appear.

Then we ran out of fluid and I convinced him that tomorrow we will have Mommy find some more solution and fill the wand and then he and Grammy can make bubbles to his heart's content.

Yeah, making a four year old happy sometimes is pretty easy.

Sometimes.

And then too there are times when a four year old who has been really good as gold almost all day can turn on an old Grammy in a heartbeat too, ya know.

He was still happy, basking in the delight of the bubbles but went off to see what else he could play with then since the bubble maker was dead for tonight. And the way he was zipping around here, jabbering away to himself, I figured all was well.

I returned to typing my e-mail and finished telling my cousin about the bubble thing and how happy it had made him and how much enjoyment and pleasure I had gotten too out of watching him giggle over a silly little bubble.

Then the phone rang and I slid my chair over to the table, picked it up, seeing it was my older daughter calling (no presto magic here -it was the phone with caller ID ya know) and just as I was saying "Well, hello there..." to her, out of the corner of my left eye I see something in the seat of the brown recliner chair and that's when I screamed or shrieked -take your pick there of which word you think best applies -"OH NO! OH KURTIS! OH MY GOD! WHAT THE..." and then I stopped and told my daughter not to get upset cause I wasn't going to get upset but was instead going to try my very best to pick the humor out of the situation before my eyes.

There in the middle of the chair was a little styrofoam cup that yesterday, when Kurtis brought it home from school had contained some dirt or peat or some such stuff and had held one very pretty little blooming marigold but now, virtually all the dirt from that cup was laying there, in a big pile in the middle of the seat of the brown recliner chair and some of the dirt had also made its way to the floor too!

I decided then and there that I wasn't going to let that mess divert me from the phone call from #1 daughter so we talked and laughed over a whole bunch of things then before hanging up.

Then, I went upstairs to get the vacuum and brought it down to the living room.

I wish you could have been here to see the look of panic on Kurt's face as he watched me carry that big old dreaded and dreadful vacuum cleaner into the living room. Total panic then ensued!

He screamed, he cried, he shrieked -"Oh, no Grammy. No vacuum. No vaccum!"

Yeah, he's terrified of the vacuum cleaner!

Normally, when either Mandy or I have to use it we make sure the other is aware it is going to be turned on -if Kurt is present -and we make sure the other person also is seated, nothing spillable handy and that the other person is ready to have a certain little boy come flying at her, scrambling like crazy to get purchase and crawl up into that person's lap so that he can be held, soothed, cuddled -all that good stuff -until the vacuum is then shut off and life will go back to normal then.

Well, since it was just him and me here in the room there was no one to hold him then while I did the nasty deed of sucking up that dirt from the floor and the chair so he cried and screamed the whole time I was running the thing.

And as quickly as that quasi-meltdown of his had come on, it passed when I shut the vacuum off then too.

Just evidence that life really can suck when a vacuum cleaner is present ya know -especially if your name is Kurtis and you're four-years old and Grammie is just trying to clean up a lovely -NOT -mess you just made!

At no time though did I am the vacuum cleaner wand at him -didn't even think about doing that till now as I was writing this post.

But knowing these kids -there's always tomorrow and always the opportunity to do something like that to him -or his sister too, for that matter, then.

Yeah, Mandy's been known to do that to him with the vacuum wand/hose but only when he's already being held and is softly talking to himself to self-calm by repeating over and over, "Just a vacuum, just a vacuum!"

Now I think it's high time -whether he likes it or not -that he goes to bed.

Cause I really don't want to experience what he might decide to get into next!

(Just a darned good thing he's so sweet and cute, ya know. )