Ladies who lunch

I very dear friend of mine is a sort-of honorary grandmother around here. One of the wonderful things she does for us is to every so often come and take a child or two out to lunch. G. and L. have watched older siblings go to lunch with our friend for a very long time and have been asking and asking when they will get to go. Well, today was the day! They dressed up and were ready to leave hours before she was due to get here. F i n a l l y (to them) she arrived. I was able to get a picture before they all headed out the door.

You can be amazed at the general cooperativeness for the picture taking... it also show just how excited the girls were to go that they would agree to something they would normally balk at.

I have some other news from the morning and another item to be filed under the heading of siblings and play is good therapy. Nefertiti has quickly become a favorite around here because of her liking of attention. I was sitting in my bedroom trying to quietly sip my morning cup of coffee when a parade of cats comes mewing and crawling through. I wasn't surprised at all to see H. and Y. being cats, but what completely shocked me was to discover R. at the end of the cat parade crawling (CRAWLING!) and mewing with the other girls. People... she was CRAWLING voluntarily. Now, to be honest, if a real cat walked like she was crawling you would be scooping it up and running to the pet ER before I had finished typing this sentence, but it was still a genuine crawl. Knee, hand, knee, hand alternating. The only time I have ever seen her do this was after working with her for a bit, moving her limbs for her. Her initial tries were always parallel instead of alternating motion. And the fact that in addition to the real crawling she was imagining she was a cat... Well... I'm kind of speechless. And thrilled. And more than a wee bit relieved because sometimes it feels as though real progress is hard to find and slow to come. Trust me, I will be smiling about this all day.