New Year's Day

We all slept in this morning. Yay! We were late going to doggie park, but we finally had some friends there to play with! There were a 21 mo. old chocolate and two Wheaten Terriers. Kevin ran around with them as if he were a puppy too!






On the way home from doggie park, Kevin asked why Grampy somtimes drives "my" car. I told him that we both own it; in fact, Grampy pays for my car since I don't make any money. "You don't make any money?!"
"No, but I am writing books, so maybe I will someday."
"Why don't you write poetry?"
"Because you have to be talented to write poetry."
"I can write poetry!"
"What have you written?"
"I wrote one about a mermaid dancing in the water wearing a tutu."

Kevin had two sticks in the car. He opened the little door between the back seat and the rear so that Guinness saw the sticks. Guinness forced his big body through the hole to get the sticks. ugh.

We were invited to attend a 2 year old's birthday party! His mom, with whom Grant worked a couple of years ago, was a faithful follower of Karin's blogs about her children.

Kevin wanted to make a card for the birthday boy. He started with this picture of Mommy. The pink are her wings with a heart in them; the gray is her harp; the purple is her skirt and says "I love Mommy" on it; the "fringe" (to me - ha!) are her toes. Sweet. I said that we had to keep this picture.

He drew another. I asked if it was a lion. He said, "No, it's Mommy inside a wreath. Her lips are a heart." I suggested that he keep that picture for himself and make another one for the card.

This was his third picture -- a teddy bear:

After he finished it, he wrote "Mom" on it. I said, "Mommy is on your mind today; isn't she?" He said, "Yes." I told him that he should keep that one too. He finally drew a picture for Teo.

At the party, Kevin drew a picture of me on Teo's easel. :)

Among the children to arrive was an 8 year old who is as much of a manager as Kevin. Initially, they had fun batting the party balloons around.

The 8 year old began gathering all of the balloons and only letting Kevin have one. After complaining about the lack of sharing, Kevin did something very interesting: he reached other balloons not yet harvested by the other kid and gave them to him. Then the boy was willing to share the balloons for a while. Later, the boy hid all the balloons. When Kevin found them and was retrieving them, more managerial lack of cooperation erupted. About that time, we were able to refocus Kevin on food.
Karin had told me that Kevin did not do well at unstructured, new situations. Yep! Now I know!

I had bookmarked some Websites that would interest Kevin -- one being Jacquie Lawson's cards such as this one -- http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=ER13610552. He spent at least an hour going through every Christmas card on the site!

Tonight we had a piano lesson. If only we had had time to start this earlier in the week and then had a practice session every day...

Then he sang with me while I played Christmas carols. At one point, I turned around and he was hugging Guinness, so I grabbed my camera. I couldn't choose one; I had to post four!




As I continued to play Christmas carols, he began drawing pictures again. Then he wanted tape. I gave him some, then asked what he was going to do (assuming he was taping paper to paper). Nope! He wanted to tape his pictures to the wall. I said, "No." So then he wanted to tape them to the piano! :-0 I told him the only place I had to display his art was on my fridge using magnets, not tape.

His description of this is -- "This is the best picture anyone ever drew of the Christmas Star, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus."

He proceeded to tell me that the Wise Men were in the stable on the mantle. Again, the manager has to be in charge! I had told him to move the Wise Men around the house each day he is here until they make it back to the stable on the day that he goes home. He said that he would be going home soon, so he had to get the Wise Men to the stable.

He has the two little lambs ON Baby Jesus. I suggested that the baby would be more comfortable without a lamb on top. He didn't agree.