Oh, The Fun!

Last night, Kurtis had discovered Maya's bedroom slippers -a pair of really soft, furry, red Clifford slippers -and was putting them on, taking them off, putting them back on again. Very much enjoying himself with them.

That is, until Maya saw he was messing with HER slippers -which she had previously been totally ignoring -and as that old line to the joke thing goes "And then the fight began!"

Oh yes,it was the end of the world as Maya knows it you know! How dare her little brother try on her slippers? Just an unheard of thing in her mind. As a result, she launched off into a major meltdown which it took Bill and I a long, long time to calm her down, bring her out of it and back to being relatively calm for a while.

Just one of those little idiosyncracies that come about from dealing with the mental processes of a five-year-old with sibling rivalry -or it is just the norm for dealing with a five-year-old, high-functioning autistic child? Who knows!

I meant to post this on Monday but sort of got side-tracked a bit by other things and yesterday -well yesterday, was pretty much all evolving around watching the inauguration.

But anyway, here's a little video that we did Monday morning here of Kurtis playing his own type of basketball game. He was so doggone cute -and very comical -to watch him toss this big ball into the box -or even just in the vicinity of the box -and then, he would dance around, flapping and clapping, chortling "YAY! YAY!" at the top of his lungs. The rest of us just cackled away, laughing at his enjoyment of this little game -so pure, so simple and yet, so fulfilling for him and for us to see!

Hope you enjoy viewing it as much as we enjoyed watching him at play too!




I'm going to go a bit off-topic here now and tell you about something that has been evolving with a friend of the family.

This is about a young woman, good friend of Mandy's, a wife, mother to two small boys. Recently, she went looking for a job -something part-time, that would give her family a little bit of extra money (who can't use that from time to time) and also, which would afford her a little bit of time outside the house, away from the constant demands of a two-year-old and a six-year-old.

When she initially got this idea to find a job, her husband was very much against the idea. Why, I'm not really sure, but suffice it to say, he was not at all happy when she accepted a part-time position waitressing in a restaurant, not a restaurant-bar, just a restaurant, in a nearby town. Mandy agreed to watch her little guy on the afternoons she is scheduled to work. Not a difficult thing to do, overall, as he is generally a very happy little camper. Also a very comical little guy much of the time too and it gives Kurtis a little bit of much needed socializing with a child in his age range. Not that the boys actually "play" all that much together but still, just being around another little boy his age is good for both the kids.

Shortly after this friend of Mandy's took this job, she also stumbled across something on Facebook -the information about a long-ago former boyfriend of hers and she, quite innocently, sent him a little message, just a "Hello" thing, not a proposition or anything like that.

Well, seems the husband discovered this (from checking the history on their computer) and now is convinced she is involved with the guy, being adulterous, the whole nine yards, ya know.

To add insult to injury, the woman's younger brother, has written a poem, which he dedicated to his older nephew, the six-year-old, about the tragedy he sees is unfolding in his sister's life.

When Mandy explained to me what was really going on -which is nothing, at least nothing like the brother or the husband think is going on anyway, I said this is a dynamite keg she's sitting on and that they -the friend and her husband -are in dire need of counseling. Just the fact that the husband can not understand a woman, a mother, has a need to escape at times from the zoo that life can be when dealing only with small children and housework, is something very few women in that type of situation don't have a need for either. The checking of her search history on the computer, jumping to conclusions about all the other things too -to my mind, smacks of a very controlling relationship as well.

The poem the brother wrote, the comments he inserted too on Facebook, all indicate to me that the brother is very chauvinistic too in his views about his sister -and women, in general as well. Ah, but that is very much still a big part of the society in which we live here -backwoods attitudes about women, motherhood, marriage and such. The brother tried to explain his poem with the words that he is a "Writer" and that is what he does, how he expresses himself. I don't -or wouldn't -have an issue with the poem as such then, with respect to him calling himself a "writer" had he not posted it with the heading it was dedicated to his little nephew in view of the circumstances ongoing in the home, the potential break-up of the marriage, et al.

So with that little bit of information I put forth here, I'm just curious as to what your thoughts are about a situation like this. Do you see something with dire consequences all because a woman says hello -whether it be via an e-mail or in person -to an individual from her past? And what thoughts do you have about the aspect of a woman with small children wishing to have a part-time job too?

Feel free to make your contributions here to the discussion.