Visitors

I really don't know if this an spd thing, a Brady thing, or just a boy thing, but having friends or family over to visit causes the children to go WILD. I really wish I could take Brady out of the equation and see how the other kids behave. Brady gets soooooo excited to have people over to our house that he just can't stand it. When we tell him someone's coming there's lots of jumping up and down and squealing, followed by asking every five minutes when they're going to get here. And once they arrive and the "hi"s are said, Brady proceeds to RUN around the house, sometimes bouncing off the furniture. And the other kids follow suit, most likely b/c they aren't allowed to do that at home.

With all the fun toys and games we have, all the kids want to do is run around the house. And throw things at each other.

Ok, so they don't always throw things at each other, but when my husband decides to blow up a beach ball right before guests arrive, they do. We had 3 boys and a girl over for dinner last night. For most of the evening, they all ran around throwing the ball at each other, hiding from each other, etc. The little girl would take breaks to play quietly with Henry, which was great, but they'd eventually join the fun. We did manage to get the craziness outside for a little while right before and after dinner, which gave the adults a much needed break. We have a fenced in yard, so we could just watch from the peaceful house. Only problem - poor Henry couldn't join them w/out an adult and none of us adults were in the mood to go out there. So he just sat at the screen door watching all the big kids. Luckily, he didn't get as upset as I expected.

So, I'm really wondering how playdates go when Brady isn't involved. I have visions of the kids doing some imaginary play, some games, maybe a little bit of running around. But maybe not, guess I won't really know until Henry gets to be Brady's age and have playdates without Brady around.

This also poses a problem when we have kids over that have a "no running in the house" rule at home. The other mom is constantly reminding their kid to stop running, and I apologize, trying to explain that I gave up on that a long time ago b/c Brady just doesn't know how to walk unless he's in a line at school (and even that didn't really happen until after several weeks of OT). So, the rule in our house is no socks if you're going to be running.