Learning Curve?

It's been an interesting couple of days here. Actually, in all honesty, I suppose I should say most every day around this house brings about learning something new for someone here -not always for me -but someone in the house obviously is learning something most every day.

Sometimes, when I learn things the grandkids are learning I am amazed, really shocked at times too though.

Yesterday -Saturday morning that would be -was one of those days!

I had assumed the "normal" position -that's pretty much what my kids refer to when I am seated in front of the good old computer -playing on Facebook, reading blog posts on my Reader, doing my e-mail -whatever it may be -but using the computer. Actually -truth be told -I have three "normal" positions -one is yes, in front of the computer. The second would be curled up in my recliner working on the embroidery project of the current day and the third would also involve the recliner too but would be me sitting there, semi-upright, but sound asleep with the tv blaring and usually with said embroidery project in my lap, waiting for me to wake up again and put in another stitch or two.

Now that I've explained that, let me tell you the first rather surprising thing I learned this weekend.

I was rather engrossed in something on the monitor -don't have any recollection right now what it was though -when Kurtis came running up to me and started telling me some story that was -to him -of the utmost importance. It had to do with putting stuff in your mouth and that stuff then goes to the stomach and it gets all smooshed out and then (this has to be said rather breathlessly, I might add -to get the full effect) from there it goes to the pipes below that and then it ends up coming out as pee.

Say what, Son? And where did the need to explain what I gathered was his explanation of the digestive process come from anyway? His statement to me came completely out of the blue -no one was talking about anything at the time, much less that -or what I interpreted it as being the digestive process due to his pointing to various areas on his body anyway.

What does one say to a 5-year-old who has just given you this explanation anyway?

Not knowing what inspired this little speech from him and being a bit stunned at his explanation of things -"how things work" in his mind anyway -I just gave him a sort of incredulous look and said "Really?"

To which he replied, "Yes, really, Gram!"

Okay. I'll take your word for it and then I'm gonna ask your mother if she gave him an explanation like that at some time or other recently that it was kind of, apparently, lodged in his brain and had reached a point where he felt he had to share that information with me. So when Mandy got home later yesterday, I mentioned this to her and she said she thought maybe they were discussing things like that in his kindergarten class recently.

Hmmm. That kind of had me wondering about the how and why-for they would be talking about things like that as early on as kindergarten but figured, whatever -apparently he is learning these things and maybe he can't absorb proper names and such for the digestive process but he did have a lot of the stuff in his own good order type of set-up anyway.

A little later in the day, Mandy informed me she had just received a text message from a former family member (to her -as in her Sister-in-law, soon or someday to be ex-SIL, ya know) in which it was stated that the sheriff's deputy -or deputies -had just picked up another former member of the family and had taken him off to the hoosegow for non-payment of child support. Hmmm. They had encountered him about a month or two back over the same problem but at that time, he had managed to get someone to pay whatever amount they were requesting at that time so was not locked up that time. This time, apparently things went much differently and he was now supposedly under lock and key.

A bit of really bad timing on his part -if what he had told me a week or so back was the truth -and that was that tomorrow he was supposed to begin employment at a new and legitimate job -not one that was under the table or anything like that and supposedly then, he would be getting back on his feet, getting financial "legs" again, as it were.

All of this brings up a question I have long had in my mind about people being arrears for child support and for which I've never been able to figure out -or receive from any one in charge of these things -what is the point of arresting someone, placing them in jail for non-support, not releasing them till the arrearage -or percentage of that figure -is paid which effectively only takes them off the job market then and if one is out of the job market, how then can they earn the money to pay that money of which they are in arrears? I'm not saying this in defense of the former son-in-law, just wondering about how this seems a bit nonsensical to me.

Then, today -Kurt's TSS was here this afternoon, spending a few hours working with him and at one point while she was here, Miss Maya appeared and told us something that kind of surprised me. I don't know what inspired her but she asked Miss Dawn and I if we knew what YDIJ means and neither of had a clue as to where she was going to take us with this question but eventually she informed us that YDIJ means "Your Dad's in Jail!" Another of those "Hmmmm" moments hit me then as I wasn't sure if she had just sort of picked up on that bit of news from overhearing any conversations here yesterday or what. So I asked Mandy about his too and Mandy said she had tried to explain to Maya that yes, this is where her Dad is at the moment but we figured then that the abbreviated form Maya used was something of her own doing!

I also inquired to Miss Dawn -who is with Kurtis every school day, all day long too this year if they were studying -in school -anything about the digestive process and she said no, not unless they had reviewed that at some point in time when she may have been away from the classroom for a brief interval or some such.

All of which leads me back then to wondering how, or from what source, Kurtis had managed to learn this description he had rattled off to me yesterday which was a semi-correct tale according to a 5-year-old's comprehension anyway, of the digestive system and the process food takes from ingestion to expulsion anyway.

Oh the things small children pick up and understand never ceases to amaze me, that's for sure.

I wonder now too about the Christmas a few years back when Miss Maya received three -yes, you read that number correctly -three guitars of varying degrees of "realness" as gifts that year. Two were definitely toy guitars, true enough, but one was an actual guitar and in my opinion, was way over and above her learning abilities that particular year since no one here has any knowledge about how to play a guitar nor did any type of beginner guitar lessons come with that instrument either. But that just makes me wonder now if there had been someone who knew a little about the basics of the instrument, or some kind of instructions that maybe someone here could have interpreted to her, who knows but perhaps we'd have on our hands today a budding little prodigy playing her heart away on a guitar? I dunno but the way she picks up on things on her own, it does seem like it could have had potential back then. At least it might have saved said guitar from being destroyed by her then at any rate -which is what ultimately happened to that instrument in the end, you see. (Lack of planning, lack of foresight -people need to think before buying gifts of that caliber for a 4-year-old in my opinion anyway. The toy guitars would have sufficed completely at that point in time!)

But anyway, later this afternoon, while Miss Dawn and I were talking and Kurtis was trying to play with a particular "coloring book" of Maya's -one that is actually a "painting:" coloring book that requires a special brush and paint set to be used on the special type paper in this particular book to make the colors appear and he was not using said book but rather a plain piece of green construction paper with that particular paint brush and paints -a rather futile effort then happening for him as nothing was happening with the paints and the brush on that kind of paper. So Miss Dawn and I were trying to explain that to him -wrong paper equals nothing with that brush and those paints.

And nothing seemed to be registering with him as to what we were trying to get across there.

This whole explanation went on for at least a half-hour with him until finally he looked at me and said something to the effect that this wasn't working was it? And I responded to him with a simple "No!"

And that's when he looked at me and said "No poopie."

I -in turn -looked at Miss Dawn and asked her if his wording there was actually paraphrasing one of my own favorite responses -that being "No S**t!" And she nodded her head to let me know that yes, it was.


Then a bit after that discussion, we had the drawing of names for Christmas gifts -just between the adults in the family. Maya was intrigued by this and made up little slips of paper on her own to devise a drawing of names for gifts too -but her listings included the names of all three of the therapist/TSS people who work with the kids as well as the names of all the pets in the family too. She made a big production out of that process, needless to say and was really excited to announce that Uncle Clate had drawn Pearl's name in that drawing -Pearl being the still a bit of a kitten in the household, ya see.

But she then wanted to know whose name each of us adults had drawn and upon asking her Mom whose name she had picked out of the mix, Mandy told her "Moron's" to which Maya nodded and said, "Oh, Uncle Clayton, huh?"

Yep! That would be the correct assumption and yes, she hears that when Mandy answers the phone and it happens to be her brother on the other end of the line as she invariably then addresses him as "Moron."

Isn't sibling love wonderful though?

And isn't it also really amazing though how small children pick up so many little things that are said and seem to know exactly what is being said, what is meant and how to use certain things they hear too?

Just saying....ya know!