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A little humor in the home lately involved Mandy and Kurtis this past Tuesday and I thought I'd share this with you today.

Every Tuesday, he has a therapy session at the center in Philipsburg that handles all his rehab-type programs and this is called "Play Therapy." It's neat really in that he meets with the therapist there -one he really loves -and they do all kinds of things, exercises, playing board games, playing with various toys and such -all of which is really beneficial to him and the therapist is also able then to gauge a lot about how much progress he is making all the time with the stuff the agency has in place for him.

This past Tuesday, after his session, he was in for a pretty long day though as he then had an appointment over in Altoona with the Allergy doctor so off they went to that one too then.

After his doctor's appointment, Mandy and Kurt stopped in a nearby store there and she said when they entered the store, right out in front, was huge cat on display. Not a live cat, but rather apparently some stuffed animal or some such but it was "dressed" in a cat costume that was set up to advertise then that the store now had Halloween costumes on display and for sale in another part of the store.

Now, you have to keep in mind that Kurtis has issues, shall we say, with various things -one of which is masks and costume type stuff for Halloween plus, he also has a bit of an issue about make-believe things involving cats. Go figure! We haven't been able to get to the bottom of the cat problems along the make-believe lines yet although he has no fear of real live cats and loves our Tomcat, Fluff-Nuts, here.

But anyway, she said when they walked through the door and he saw this big display of a cat in a costume -apparently it was very, very tall, very large -he stopped dead in his tracks and about all he could do was kind of mutter "Big Cat!" to her. She said she began then to brace herself for him to have a screaming hissy fit but he ended up handling it much better than she expected although she said his eyes were to the point of being about as big as saucers and she had a heck of a time getting him to walk away then from the display.

At home, in recent months, he discovered that there is this fairly large stone thing that Mandy has on top of one of the kitchen cupboards and though it is really just a big stone, it has a cat face painted on it. During the daytime hours, he goes about his business in the house, playing and never mentions this "cat" stone thing but at night, depending on the lights that may be on in the kitchen or dining room, if he happens to look up and sees that stone sitting up there with the cat face on it, sometimes he goes into a major panic over it although lately now, he has been getting better and just comes to me, pointing out to the cupboard at the stone and saying "Is just a stone? Is just pretend?"

Yes, baby, it is just a stone, just pretend and the more he grasps that concept, I'm hoping we can transfer that bit of understanding over to him to enable him to accept lots of other things he will see over the next two months now all pertaining to the Halloween season.

Maya did quite well in learning about Halloween, trick or treating, costumes and such without too much hassle but Kurtis -well, as you (and we) know, can sometimes be very much a horse of a different color about his fears and such.

Hoping here for a fairly easy transition for him this year now though!