We drove from Dismal to Michigan City, IN yesterday. Not too bad a trip - it took us about 9 hours all told. Mo's a fabulous road-tripper. We bought a bunch of new coloring books, mazes, and dot-to-dots for the trip, and I packed a whole bunch of her books - pretty much anything I've seen her reading on her own, so she could read in the truck. She was cool with that, and driving the truck (a late decision, the fuel injector on the car is being weird) let her sit next to me and be able to reach all her books and snacks by herself. Made for a fairly smooth trip.
We had one little rough spot where I hit some traffic and she wanted me to look at something. I snarled and snapped and Mo proceeded (once she'd cooled off a little) to draw a picture of herself with a big frown on her face and a giant red X. Pretty clear message, there. Lately Mo and George have been talking about anger-management, which is very interesting. He had kind of a blow-up with his saw mill several weeks ago and did a lot of yelling before he cooled off, and apparantly it caught Mo's attention in a big way, so that she actually asked him about it. So they've been chatting on the subject of how they can deal with anger and frustration. There was a small incident last week where Mo was frustrated with a computer game and went and pet the kittens for awhile to calm herself down before going and turning the computer off. Its just fascinating to watch her working on this.
We're taking a day to chill out at my dad's house before heading up to WI and my friend Lora's house. It's been nice and mellow for the most part. There are two other kids here, Jake and Aaron - I'm not sure their exact ages, but Jake's a couple years older and Aaron a couple years younger than Mo, I believe. The kids have gotten along really well (for the most part). They've all been pretty wired to have a new kid to play with - in Mo's case two!
My fabulous dad (hi!) got a portable dvd player for us! Wooo Hooo! I'm very excited. If necessary I can tuck Mo out of the way at Lora's house with a movie while we all hang out being weird grown-ups, plus it will be handy in the car, plus other travel adventures... And! it will be handy for visiting up at the Pumpkin Hollow community. We've started going up there for dinner on a more regular basis, but I've been reluctant to bring Mo too terribly often as adult dinners can be long, dull affairs from her perspective. Now I have more options. Thanks, Dad.
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