Take a Bow

This year, his first at the new school, Little A's Christmas program fell on a Saturday morning. His previous school would hold end of term plays and such on weekdays, which made it difficult for parents who worked regular day jobs to attend, Big A among them.

Thankfully, this school holds these events on Saturday mornings, and as it marked their first Christmas, this first show was quite special.

Similarly to all school shows, each class "performed" to the tune of a Christmas song. Little A usually stands and sways, watching the audience all the while, despite doing all the actions properly when practiced beforehand.

This time, a first in over a year and a half, he did not go ballistic with the applause, something that amazed all of us who knew how upset he would get over the sound of a handclap since March, 2012.

Not only did he not get upset, he was perfectly calm and kept his Santa hat on for the entire song number and bowed at the end of it. True, the "stage" platform had been in its place in the school's media centre since Halloween, and they had been practicing on it daily, but he had not been confronted with a crowd of eager parents for a while, all of them clapping.

We were very proud. After the show was over, Little A bounced back onto the stage, and bowed again and again, as if to tell us that he, too, recognised his achievement. Here's to more applause, with no more anger or tears!

Happy Christmas, all. 

Graffiti

All children write on walls. Or at least they try to. When we were young, ink pads and rubber stamps were strictly forbidden inside our house. Back then, in this Third World Country, there was no such thing as washable ink so any marks made remained, indelible.

These days, thankfully, children's art supplies mostly come off with a little water and soap, though sometimes elbow grease is still required.

Little A prefers spelling to drawing, and has little patience colouring, painting and doing crafts. He likes spilling paint on the floor, or trying to paint on the walls, specifically the location underneath our apartment's only "proper" artwork, a large abstract that runs the length of a wall next to our dining table. If not for the glass covering the painting, he no doubt would have made his own additions to it long ago.

Recently though, he decided to write on the wall. His first graffiti is still there, and will likely not come down until we repaint or move away, and heaven knows when either of those possibilities might happen.

Little A's choice of drawing is his current favourite, the Pixar lamp. He has watched all the permutations of this video on youTube, and, finally, has tried to recreate it on his own, complete with tag line from the video he likes best.

At school, he currently has an hour a week with an art teacher who specialises teaching individuals with needs. Right now they're just working on colouring larger areas within the lines, but soon, hopefully, Little A will be creating more of his own works of art.