2 ½ year old granddaughter’s alligator tears when I didn’t want to let her “watch”. As in, “I want to watch, please.” Anything, a Dora video, a “show” on TV, anything. The look on a mother’s face at the Science Center. GD2 (above) was building a tower. She accompanies every activity with paragraphs of explanation. Circle, square, triangle. The topper was when she saw that a large block wouldn’t balance on the smaller one which was currently on the top of the tower. “It’s too small,” she said as she removed the offending top block and replaced it with the larger one in her hand. I just smiled at the mother, what could I do? All the kids piling into the kitchen, armed with stools and aprons to “help”. I really didn’t need so much help, but I got it.GS3’s joy when his mother called and said they needed to come home early, for his basketball practice. He really is excited about the basketball.
The mad Yahtzee game. GS3 can add, do simple multiplication , and was a fun playing partner. The little girls were playing with extra dice, banging them off my new(er), food covered, laminate floor. I have a “kids” Yahtzee game, the thing has dice with animal photographs, matching tokens, and a board on which to place your token when you roll a matching animal. GD2 was matching all the tokens to the pictures on the board and giving a running commentary.
Oh, yes, the wedding video. I’d never watched the video, and we were running out of activities. We popped in the video from the children’s parents wedding. What a trip. We were all younger, it is a 12 year old video. The quality wasn’t the best, but we could recognize the people. It was a shock to see my late father-in-law, looking good and sitting in the church. The children’s reactions also told a lot about their personalities. GS3 said, “my mother looked different then.” GD2 said, “There’s my Daddy, I love my Daddy!” GD1, our 4 ½ year old diva said, “Does my mother still have that dress?” I replied that it was stored in a box in my attic. Then she said, “Where are the steps to your attic?” I had to explain that we weren’t taking the dress out of the box. Then I did tell her that if someday, she was getting married, we would get the dress out and let her wear it.. D1 suggested that I check out the resale shops dress clothes in size 4 or 6, for her to play dress up in. I guess I’ll have to do that.
