Meet Rudolph Harbart...

The past week was, well - interesting - to say the least. A whole lot of ups and downs along the way but we survived 'em in spite of 'em all (as an old trucker friend would have said.)

Mid-week, Maya developed a cough -dry, hacking kind of thing -and by Wednesday evening, it was obvious she wasn't feeling up to par. Thursday morning though, still coughing, Mandy asked her if she wanted to stay home from school, telling her if she didn't feel well, she didn't have to go to school.

Her response to that was such that you'd have thought she'd just been threatened within an inch of her life or had been given a really long, terrible prison sentence because Maya informed her Mom that by no means would she be staying home from school, that she absolutely had to be there.

Some things are such a switch to hear for me as I think back to when my kids were in school. If I'd ever given them the option of staying home or going to school, I probably would have needed dynamite to get them up and out the door when the illness was gone!

Friday morning though, it was quite the different scene as about 10-15 minutes before the bus was due to arrive, Miss Maya developed a severe case of the weepies during which time she rattled off several reasons why she couldn't go to school that day. One of the reasons was that she was afraid to get on the bus and another that the bus driver calls her names. Yeah, right!

It took a bit of prodding but eventually Mandy got to the root problem which was that she had been given a paper by her reading teacher to bring home, have it signed and return it to school and apparently Maya had misplaced that paper so as a result she was obsessing about the whole thing and was afraid to go to school because she feared she would get into trouble with the teacher and get an "infraction" on her record.

Needless to say, she was on the bus when it pulled away from in front of the house.

Saturday morning was another really interesting day here too.

Mandy was at work Saturday a.m. -her last day -so I was here with the kids. Maya was upstairs playing quietly -a switch from her normal routine of pestering her brother by bossing him around, getting him in trouble -and Kurt was in the dining room playing by himself with the "Hungry Hippos" game.

He was having himself a high old time with that game as he played one game after another and after each one, he would announce that he had won that game or that "You won that one!" to his invisible opponent. Then he stopped playing that and came to me announcing that "Rudolph Harbart had gone home."

Okay, I figured, I'll bite and I asked him who Rudolph Harbart is. His answer was that he is his friend and he had just gone back home -to the North Pole. According to Kurtis, Rudolph Harbart lives at the North Pole with Santa Claus. Oh, yes he does! Quite emphatically he told me that story.

When Mandy came home, I gave her a bit of a heads up on what he'd said and then, I asked him to tell Mommy who he had been playing Hungry Hippos with that morning and he reiterated the whole story to his Mom then too. And, again on Monday when his TSS -Miss Dawn -was here for the day to work with him, I asked him about Rudolph and he repeated the whole story all over again for her too.

Makes you wonder where in blazes these kids get some of their ideas doesn't it?

Tonight, at supper, he delved into a whole different area -clothing!

I had on a red v-neck sweater made of a sort of soft, plushing kind of yarn and out of the blue, Kurt reached over and ran his hand up and down the right sleeve of my sweater after which he looks up at me and announces, "Gram! Your sweater is made of fabric!"

Why yes, Kurtis, I guess it is.

At that point, he looks up at his Mother and tells her "Your sweatshirt is made of fabric too, Mom."

Gotta love his observation skills, don't 'cha?

I love never having a clue as to what is going to enter in a conversation here next. It's the little announcements that definitely keep things moving along, don't they?