Aversion and the "End of the World" scenario!

Before I get into writing about my "topic" of today, here's the photo I was attempting to post yesterday in my introduction of our newest member of the family into my blog. Here's Sammy and his new BFF, Miss Pearl PurrBall, all curled up together in a family-friendly way in the blue recliner. They were both pretty exhausted after having spent a good bit of the previous evening racing and chasing each other back and forth through the living room, dining room and kitchen.

Now, on to my story du jour.

Today is a day that holds big plans for me, for Miss Maya and also for Master Kurtis too. It's the day when I meet up with my good friends from my high school (and elementary school too) days for lunch but it's also a day when Mandy is working and that would normally leave me here with both kids. And to have that happen today would normally have meant that I'd be taking both grandkids to lunch with me. Not that that would be a terrible thing, but with these two, it can sometimes be more than a bit risky as one never knows how well they are going to behave under any circumstances, even those they are very familiar with much less something that is a rare occasion type thing.

So, to try to ward off any problems with the kids, Mandy had made arrangements that Miss Maya will be leaving early this morning to spend some quality time at the Bigler Playground with Miss Brittany (her TSS) as they enjoy participating in the summer fun program at that place and Kurtis will be leaving too -around 11:30 a.m., to go for some fun activity with Miss Dawn, his TSS. And all that would then leave me to go to my lunch with my friends without the worry of meltdowns happening between an almost 8-year-old and her 5-year-old little brother!

YES! A great game plan -or so it did seem to be but it almost got blown out of the water before anyone ever got out of the house and on their way to having a great, fun-filled summer vacation day.

And all of it almost came to an end over one simple little individual sized box of cereal!


This is one of those things that when a certain little girl has something fixated in her mind, everything had better ALL come together just right -or else.

So, this morning when Kurtis got up (he woke up first) and came down, he spied this box of cereal, one of those little individual-size boxes of cereal, of Cinnamon-Life, sitting on the dining room table and asked me if he could have that.

"Sure! Go for it!" I told him and he brought it over for me to open it for him and then, sat down at the table to proceed to munch it down.

Then, when he was almost finished with said box of cereal, Maya got up and wandered into the dining room and that's when all Hell began -or had the potential -to break loose as she asked me, "Where's my box of cereal?" Looking at her little brother sitting there, chowing down she realized he was eating that Cinnamon-Life stuff that she had earmarked as being hers -apparently having decided last night that it was what she would want, would have to have then for her breakfast this morning.

And then, the war was on!

"KURTIS! You're eating MY cereal! WHY are you eating MY cereal? That was MY cereal and you took that deliberately and you're eating it and that is wrong and bad, bad, BAD!" And with that, she took off after him, ready to grab him and do a throw-down with him getting the bad end of the stick, ya know.

I tried and tried to explain to her -for roughly 15 minutes at least -that it was not Kurtis who was at fault here but rather it was my fault because I was not aware that she had made distinct plans, which were apparently of utmost importance to her tastebuds too and no other cereal could ever possibly be used as a satisfactory substitute either!

Boy, when an obsession enters into her world, Katie bar the door because you're gonna have to find just the right thing to use to talk to Maya and get her to calm down and accept that from time to time, things happen and we all have to adjust a bit and accept that and be just a tad flexible.

Finally, she did calm down enough that she looked over the individual cereal boxes and the selections there and settled on a box of Trix for her breakfast.

So, by the time Miss Brittany arrived to take her to their destination at the Bigler Playground, Maya was dressed, fed and in a fairly decent mood too!

Then as they went to leave, Brittany inquired about Maya's booster seat to use in her car and sheesh, wouldn't you just know it, but Gram couldn't find it! Where in the heck had that thing gone anyway? I hunted all over the downstairs of the house and no booster seat anywhere to be found. So eventually, I told Britt to just strap her into the back seat of her car sans the booster seat because, technically, Maya is big enough to not have to have a booster seat to ride in the car. (Yes, she's tall for her age so we can, if need be, get around that requirement for her from time to time.)

They were just leaving the house when the phone rang and as I went to answer the phone, they went out and got in Brittany's car and pulled away.

And on the phone -Miss Renee -the Behavior Specialist in charge of the case loads for each of the grandkids and their TSS, calling to tell me that she had just learned that the plans for today's activities at the Playground had been changed, postponed until tomorrow!

Oh, brother! I don't know how imbedded it was in Maya's mind about the tie-dying that the kids were supposed to do today and which had been changed to take place tomorrow so I told Renee that if she's still in an obsessive-oriented mindset this morning, she might need to think of something, gather up her wits and come up with words to use that could possibly avert the potential of a meltdown there at the Playground.

Hopefully, she will accept the change nicely for Renee and Brittany but that's something I guess I'll just have to be on pins and needles about until they return later this afternoon!

It really is amazing how easily the smallest things can go haywire with these two kids -Maya, especially -as change is often something that must come about in stages and it's not advisable to jump head-long into these things or you wind up risking a massive meltdown from her and the potential for bodily harm being inflicted on her little brother too at times!

This whole scene this morning, as angry and upset as Maya was and the way she took after her little brother, beginning to push and shove him around, had the potential of his ending up on his butt or face down on the floor and hurt and me searching around maybe for some kind of cautery equipment to stop the bleeding, ya know! (Well, thankfully it didn't reach that kind of climax here but there is always that kind of risk involved with these kids when they get an idea, especially one about possessions and what belongs to who and any thought of the harm they could do to their siblings, or a pet or even an adult, flies right out the window!)

I'm just thankful that things did calm down though and hoping too that she will accept the changes that have been made at the Playground without any major incident there too!

On another note though with Miss Maya -last night, I had to take her into Philipsburg to attend her play practice session. The Front and Centre Theatre Company for local kids in the area is going to be doing "The Jungle Book" this summer -it will be presented sometime in mid-July -and Maya has a part in this production. She's going to be one of the elephants so she's busy learning the dialogue and lots and lots of new songs too.

After practice ended and we were on our way home, as we got close to a little local restaurant that most everyone around here refers to as either "The Pumpkin House" or "The Orange Pumpkin" I asked Maya if maybe she would like an ice cream cone from there as a treat. She responded quickly with an affirmative and when I was almost to the drive to pull into the place, she then remarked to me that "Oh, they aren't open today so we can't get a cone there!"

Say what? And then it dawned on me that she was right in that the Pumpkin House is closed on Wednesdays! Boy, talk about a good memory! This kid sure has me beat as I had forgotten completely about it being Wednesday and that they are closed on that day every week but she -this seven-year-old -had remembered that little tidbit!

So, I did some thinking about what we could do to substitute for that soft-serve cone and it dawned on me that the little Pizza Shoppe in Kylertown maybe still served cones. So I pulled in there and sure enough, there in the window was the advertisement that they had "hand-packed ice cream cones!"

Ah, good -I'd been rescued!

So in we went and she decided she would like a cone with peanut butter ice cream. I ordered a small (one dip) cone for her and a double-dipper for myself. As the attendant began to scoop out the ice cream for Maya's cone, she remarked that the peanut butter ice cream was actually pretty soft last night and did I still want her ice cream in a cone or would I prefer that she put the ice cream in a cup?

I laughed and told her to go ahead and finish dipping it out into a cone as either way, I figured by the time Maya was finished eating the treat, she would have dripped a goodly bit of the delectable on herself anyway.

We got our cones (I changed my order though to strawberry -yummmmm!) and got back into my jeep and as Maya settled in her seat, she remarked to me that she couldn't fasten her seatbelt then because she had that ice cream cone she had to hold on to with one hand. So I had said we would just sit there in the jeep and eat our cones and then, when we were finished, we could worry about fastening her seat belt for her.

When we were ready to leave, I got out to hook her seat belt and saw she was still holding on to her cone but that she had eaten all the ice cream out of it without so much as a little tiny nibble on the cone.

"Aren't you going to eat the cone?"

To my surprise, she said "NO! I don't eat the cones!" And with that, she handed me the empty cone to be disposed of.

As I walked to the trash cane, the attendant was sweeping up the shoppe, getting ready to close down for the night and I mentioned to her that if ever I came in there again with Miss Maya in tow and ordered a cone for her, to remind me to have the ice cream put in a cup please because the child does NOT eat the cones!

Oh, the things one learns each and every day with these two kids!

Always something and often, things that don't go quite the way of the initial game plan can also become something of an "End of the World As We Know It" kind of scenario too!

Just one more thing to try to keep old people -like me -on your toes, ya know!