March 30 Happiness

Saturday: I sure had a nice few hours with my Kaity-Girl this afternoon. We played games, looked a funny videos, and ate a nice meal! 

Since Easter Sunday is tomorrow, we got out our resurrection eggs and reviewed the entire last week of Jesus' life here on earth by opening each egg and telling His story. Kaity has a difficult time listening to stories, so I drew her into it by asking her if she remembered certain details, etc. How I wish I could tell His story in a compelling enough way that anyone who heard it would jump up and down for joy about the good news that Jesus has paid the price for our sins and has given us eternal life!

We played 3 games of UNO (with my new Jurassic Park deck), 2-3 games of Memory (using my old decks from ToyRUs and another dinosaur card pack), and then Kaity remembered "Mouse Trap", assembled it (!!), and we played that too!

All and all, the hours went by very fast and very pleasantly. I love this dear person very much. She is not difficult to love!

March 28 Screaming!!!!!

Thursday:  Nothing terribly unusual about my time today with Kaity, except to say we finished watching "Jurassic Park Dominion" with me screaming my head off.  Once I screamed so loud, it caused Kaity to scream too!!

Kaity finally had her doctor appointment this afternoon, and although she has nothing seriously wrong with her knees, she has been BANNED from jumping at Altitude for TWO weeks!

March 27 Little Cal

Wednesday:  We had so much fun over here today! Cal is not a difficult child to "entertain" for a few hours. He is interested in everything ... as well as curious, funny, intense, persistent, cuddly ... I love him to pieces.

I've used some blue painter's tape in the playroom to make a bunch of roads and parking lots for our cars. Cal is very pleased about this.

We do quite a bit of bird watching out my side window. Cal is INSISTENT we identify each bird and he will grab my "Birds of Michigan" Field Guide thumbing through the pages until he is satisfied we have correctly identified each bird. He is quite intense about this!

It makes me super happy to see such interest in this little cutie ... his curiosity is so refreshing ... and his love of learning too!

I'm glad I ordered this field guide a few months ago!

We continued to have a lot of fun with our marble racer cars this week: "Water" (the blue racer) and "Lava" (the orange racer) had many races ... wipe outs ... flips ... crashes !!!!

With sound effects too!

Cal found the hula-hoop that I was storing on the side of my washing machine, and put it to good use today. We used it for a "fire" hoop for the cars to jump through!

I remember purchasing this little tool cart a few months before Emma was born in 2002! It has had a faithful following of grandkids throughout these 22 years. I think I have gotten quite a lot out of my initial $54 investment. All of the kids have loved this toy.

We played a lot of piano today too, trying out all the various "sounds" you can combine to make it sound really beautiful.

I love you, Little Cal! You are a delightful child to play with!

We drove back to Cal's house by 4:00 to get the kids off their school bus. Cal fell asleep immediately in my car for the 25 minute ride to his house. I was able to wake him up this week with a nice fruit snack of cantaloupe, watermelon and cucumbers. Erin is my best after-school fruit eater--but Aidan always has a bowl of fruit as well. I love to be with them after school. They are so glad to be home and be able to play. We had such a nice time this afternoon!
 

March 23 Kaity

Saturday:  Only a few more days until Jesse returns from Montana! Yay! We have missed him. I picked Kaity up today from her mom at about 3:30. We hung out over here at The Beach House for a little while, enjoyed a meal together, looked at some videos, and then headed over to Altitude.

I took ZERO pictures today--this is actually a photo of KT from a few weeks ago at Altitude. We arrived a little after 6:00. Ayden and his grandma, Lyle, were already there. It was super crowded (Saturdays are always that way because of group birthday parties), but Ayden and Kaity seemed to have a blast.

When their arm bracelets were called (which meant it was time to exit), both Ayden and Kaity asked if they could stay longer. Lyle said he would take Kaity back to her mom when they were finished jumping. Kaity texted her mom and so did I, to make sure this was okay. I was glad to see Kaity and Ayden hang out together tonight. They've had a rough few weeks. Friendships are so important; especially at Kaity's age, I think. 

I left Kaity in grandpa Lyle's capable care and drove back home to check on Terry and Ruthanne. Terry has injured (rather badly) his left ankle, and it is very painful and swollen. We ended up taking Terry into the ER Sunday morning for x-rays and treatment. I wasn't crazy about the care we received over at Saints. The doctor seemed bored out of his mind--but perhaps he had been up the entire night and was exhausted! Anyway, we ended up going back to Urgent Care (on the Beltline) Monday morning and got better help there -- i.e. an injection of Tramadol, and a Rx for pain medication/muscle relaxant, which has been helpful.

March 21 with Kaity

Thursday:  I arrived 30 minutes early to pick Kaity up today, with the goal of doing a quick clean-up over at Jesse's place; however, that plan was not realized, because I was unable to unlock the double-locked doors at his house. Thankfully, Kaity did it with ease once she came home from school. We came over to my house and hung out, ate dinner, finished watching Jurassic World (with me screaming loudly at the scary parts), and then we went jumping. We picked up Harper and Kenzie on our way there.

They had a very lively game of tag. Our friend, Elijah, was also there. He's a younger kiddo--maybe 8 years old--but you should see him jump. Wow. HIGH and steady. He's a natural athlete and very fun to watch jump. However, he would much rather play tag with everyone ... so I kind of miss watching him do his jumping antics.

Everyone did very well tonight. No hard feelings. No injuries (!!). Kaity looked exhausted--probably from so much running! These kids really have a LOT of energy. Tell you what, though. If I was 10 or 11 again, I would play tag too ... and I would see how high I could jump! I'm not sure I would attempt the kinds of jumps these kids do ... but it sure would be fun to be young again. I think these kids will look back on these hours at Altitude with a lot of fondness. They have made many friends here. The children are physically active! They are not staring at some stupid screen! Well ... there IS one girl who we have dubbed: "Phone Girl" because she jumps and runs lickity-split with a phone to the side of her ear constantly. She doesn't interact with anyone at all--which is sad. I think she is on the spectrum and doesn't know how to interact socially. Anyway ... MOST of the kids are not holding their phones while they are jumping. It's so refreshing to see kids being physically active like this.
 

March 20 with Kaity

Wednesday evening:  I arrived back to Jesse's shortly after 6:00 today to "take care" of Kaity. Neither one of us had eaten dinner, so I decided to take us out for a special Chinese treat over at the Hibachi Grill. 

NOTE TO SELF: The food there isn't really worth the price ... perhaps ALL places that offer an all-you-can-eat buffet are the same. The food all tastes kind of ... the same.

Anyway, Kaity and I ate there--and Kaity was happy about it--so that's all that really matters anyway!

We met up with some of Kaity's friends at Altitude, and ended up taking Harper back home with us. She and Kaity played awhile until it was time for bed.

I spent the night again, sleeping rather fitfully on a too narrow, too short couch ... but I did sleep at least. Having two nights of deprived rest was completely worth it to me to have Kaity be in her own bed this week. It was super nice to be with her.

March 20 with the Kids

Wednesday:  I really didn't take many pictures of Cal today. We were too busy racing my new marble cars and playing back in the playroom. I forgot all about my camera until the last 20 minutes or so.

I took painter's tape and enlarged our roadway from last week (in the playroom), adding two parking lots and an exact place to put our garage. Cal was VERY into all of it. We had wrecks like crazy and needed all FOUR of our tow trucks to be out on the road constantly. They were hauling cars over to the garage for repair all afternoon!

The car Cal is holding (above and below) is an old one that Christopher donated to my collection years ago. He had taken the liberty (in his younger days) of "decorating" it with a BLACK sharpie marker to the point where you could barely see any of the details of the paint job on the car. Cal wondered if we could give it a car wash. SO ... we took it over to the kitchen sink, I pulled up a chair so Cal could get in on the fun, and we soaked it in Dawn detergent (!!), got out our scrub brushes and ... scrubbed like crazy! We found out that Sharpie marker is quite permanent ... but I think we improved the look of the car a little bit. Anyway, Cal was very pleased.

Here are the two cars that we played with mostly throughout the day. Cal didn't even know they were here until he had already been here for an hour. He just didn't happen to see them! They were right in the dining room by some of the other toys; but he walked on the other side of the table to the back room and never saw them. He was actually in his chair eating lunch before he noticed them. "Hey! I have one of those cars at MY house ... 'cept it's wheel fell off!" 

We raced these back-up cars for the rest of the afternoon--in every room of my small house! They crashed! They did roll-overs! They spun out! They were great fun. Definitely worth $9.99!

Cal decided they needed to be named, so the blue one has been designated "Water" (this cracked me up) and the red one is "Wavva--you know, gwamma, wavva from a CANO!" Lava! Okay, then! This child kills me. 

I can't really blame Cal for naming things, though. We played a little bit with the puppets. My Sunny puppet was having a "fit" about something Cal was doing and I brought the puppet up to Cal's little face and said a bunch of things (using Sunny's voice of course) and then Cal looked up at me and said: "He's just your hand, right gwamma?" Like he wasn't quite sure. Yikes. I need to be more careful about this pretending stuff.

Pretty soon, it was time to drive back to Cal's house to meet the kids from their bus. The two neighbor boys, Benson and Abbott asked if they could play; and rather than freeze myself by playing outside (it was super cold today), I invited the boys in to play. They checked with their mom, and it was okay. We proceeded to fold paper airplanes for the next hour or so. It was a lot of fun.

Benson is on the left--he is looking up to see how his plane did after he launched it. I think Benson is on the spectrum somewhat (aren't we all?) ... but there is such a sweetness to this child. I love to sit with him and just enjoy who he is. I don't know his younger brother very well (Abbott). Sadly, these two are moving away from the neighborhood at the end of the month. I know Aidan and Erin will miss them terribly.

And Cal too! This little guy really loves paper airplanes. He does a great job flying them too. I likes BIG paper airplanes, not little ones. Aidan brought us out a piece of blue paper that was double letter-size, and I folded an airplane out of that. Cal was very pleased.

Aidan is a very resourceful little person. Look at his dear face. I love him so.

And ERIN was into drawing a figure from Pokemon--she's becoming quite the little artist.

Aidan took some of his recently folded airplanes to the top of the 2nd floor and launched them into the main room below ...

It sure was nice to be with these little children today. I am truly thankful for them. I missed out getting a photo of Brendan again today. He is quite elusive--but he is TWELVE, so that explains it. I love you too, Brendan!

March 19 with KT

Tuesday:  I got to be with KT today! Even overnight! Jesse is away for a few days, and rather than Kaity spending extra days over at her mom's, and also rather than actually spending the night at MY place, we decided it would be easier for Kaity if she just spent the night over at Jesse's ... with me. Where did I sleep you might ask? Well ... we'll get to that later.

I picked Kaity up from Diana at 6pm. I TRIED going inside the house to get her; but their dog LUNA has grown a great deal and her bark is HUGE. I just can't make myself walk through the door with a very large, very loud, barking (and jumping) dog. So ... I let Kaity know I was waiting out in the car.

We had a little bit of time to "kill" before going to Altitude. Kaity had already eaten dinner with her mom, so we stopped at Marshall's to do a little shopping. It's right on the way to Altitude! Kaity was looking for a birthday present for her friend's party this Friday night. We did not have any success purchasing something for her friend; but I did find a sale on my favorite kind of slippers and then we wandered in the toy department briefly and I was so excited to find a package of TWO marble cars for what I paid for just ONE a year ago. So, naturally, I bought them. The original one I bought was from Meijer Garden's Gift shop and it was for wee Cal's 3rd birthday. He informed me the other day that one of its wheels had "fallen off" and was quite dismal about it. I can't wait to show him these ones!

We finally made it over to Altitude. I've never been there on a Tuesday night before. Kaity is a regular Tuesday, Thursday, sometimes Friday, Sunday, and Monday Altitude person. Some of Kaity's friends were there. I took a few snapshots of them.

These first 2 pictures demonstrate my Kaity's typical abuse of her knees. She complains often of knee pain--and I don't doubt that her knees hurt one single bit--but look at her! She leaps off a 4' embankment and crashes to the mats below. Sometimes, she does this maneuver with her knees FIRST--which means, they absorb all the impact of the fall. She will do this over and over again! And she wonders WHY her knees hurt? Yikes.

Kenzie couldn't make it tonight; but Harper was there. Ayden and a new kid were doing the usual dramatic wrestling matches (much of it fake--but sometimes it's hard to tell!). Kaity and Harper were watching without much alarm.

Ayden should be in theatre. He is crazy-good at acting out injuries, death, murder, escape, terror, etc.

Here he is pretending to be dead ...

Kaity and Harper don't even pay any attention to it anymore! Oh my.

After Altitude was closed, we went back to Jesse's to settle down for the night. Kaity was on her phone quite a bit with a brand new friend; so I did a bunch of reading and then tried to get comfortable in one of the living room recliners in order to sleep. They LOOKED super comfortable; but there is this built in pillow thing that isn't one bit soft. I woke up in the middle of the night with the stiffest neck I've had in years. Thankfully, there is a small-ish couch (2-cushioned and very narrow) that I ended up crashing on. I did get adequate sleep--and even the little kitty-cat (Willow) wasn't very loud in the middle of the night! 

I drove Kaity to school the next morning so that she could eat breakfast there (this is what she likes to do rather than ride the bus, which arrives too late for breakfast). I was back home at the Beach House with plenty of time to clean myself up and get ready for ... a usual Wednesday!

March 16 with KT

Saturday:  Kaity and I have a briefer time today because she has a birthday party to attend to at 7pm. I came by Jesse's at about 3:30; but KT and I didn't leave the house until close to 4:30. KT was finishing up her shower and combing out her hair, etc. Meanwhile, Jesse was showing me parts of an HBO movie he really wants me to do--and having viewed a bit of the movie, I want to see it!! Really badly!!

Kaity and I just hung out around my little house for awhile this afternoon. I worked on the puzzle for a little bit, while Kaity was doing stuff on her phone. But then, KT suggested we watch the next Jurassic Park movie: "Fallen Kingdom". So we did!

We didn't finish watching the entire movie--we'll finish it up Thursday evening. Kaity likes watching these movies with me because I become ... rather terrified during certain scenes. For some reason, Kaity finds this amusing. Hmmm.

I'll have a busier than usual week next week with Kaity because I will actually see her Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday evenings! More about that later.

March 14 Kaity time

Thursday:  I am just going to post a few pictures I snapped with my phone before it "died" and then Kaity let me use HER phone to take the rest ... all at Altitude.

It was a "slow" night tonight at our trampoline park. Only a few of Kaity's friends were there! She had been telling me that earlier in the week she had shot a hoop with her back to the hoop and made it! So here she is trying to re-create that shot ...

First, however, she wanted to show me that she could finger spin the basketball. I'm sure there is a technical name for this maneuver, but I have no idea what it would be. And I never DID get a perfect picture of her accomplishing it either. She's pretty good at this!

Our friend Jace (aka as "Blueberry") was there and they shot hoops for awhile. Look at his face (below)!

Kenzie and Harper couldn't make it tonight. They had a family event that couldn't be interrupted. We weren't sure where Ayden was tonight either.

But it was still worth going to play for an hour. It's good for kids to get OUT of their rooms, OFF their screens, and move their bodies! Good stuff, Kaity!