Life With the Kids

It is never boring...that is for sure.  Eliza is still in the Dominican Republic waiting out the holidays & religious feast days in order to file the final paperwork with immigration.

Meanwhile, life continues here with plenty of naughtiness.  Marcos is all boy; loud, loves to burp loudly and make other obnoxious noises.  It is impossible for him to be sneaky...his face shows it so obviously that it is comical.

Elsa is another story completely.  She loves to be sneaky, especially with candy, for which she will take great risks.  Yesterday, however, I think she just tried to think of ways to make Nana (that's me)as angry as possible.  She succeeded.  They hadn't been home from school long when I was doing something in the bedrooms and then came out to the living room to check on her.  She was on the screen porch where we have a table for arts & crafts and many small bins of supplies and a large plastic bin of paper for drawing & painting.  Everything has to be covered well because rain comes in there profusely.  I am always telling them to keep the paper bin covered because water & paper don't go together.  I had left 2 plastic cups of water out there since the last painting time so they could be reused. A large brush was soaking in one of them because Elsa had failed to rinse it out last time when she went from painting on paper to PAINTING THE FLOOR!  That was a No No.  Of course she knew that.  She is six.    So, I walked out to the porch and noticed the water cups were now empty...where is the water?, I asked her.  She slowly opened the paper bin and THERE before my eyes, were both of the pet ferrets eating some of their food which had just been dumped onto the pile of paper, AND the  cups of dirty, grey water had been combined up to the tippity-top of one container in there too.  I went a little crazy and shouted so loud I think you coulda heard me all the way to the clubhouse and across the lake.  The overflowing (almost) dish of dirty water was just the ultimate.  Lots of paper was wet and had to be thrown out, but the fact that the water was dirty is what tells me she just wanted to infuriate me.  She knows that we give everybody clean water.  (Note to self: NEVER leave water in containers on porch).   Marcos advised me at that point that Mom's method of discipline for similar behavior was to forbid her from touching the ferrets for some amount of time.  She does love to hold them and then I caught her holding one by the tail...grrrrrrr....she knows better.   At some point in the afternoon she drew a blue circle on the red sofa seat cover that her mom had stitched.  I am working on that now with white vinegar.    As a final touch, she used one of her markers from her cupcake set to draw a green picture on her white closet folding door.  I took away those markers.

Last weekend we went camping with the boyscouts.  It requires so much preparation and packing that it can seem a little crazy at the time.  Why am I doing all this for a couple of days?  But it is worth it and the more prepared we are, the more enjoyable it is.  Eliza had a good list from past trips (as well as a lot of things in freezer she had prepared)but I added more things this time...like a bucket and scrubby sponge & dish soap.  I had to use a bar of soap and a rag and set it on the ground beside the faucet on a plastic bag.  Overall, we had a great time and one key factor was that it was a lot warmer than last year's trip.  In fact, it was too hot during the day.  I had not even brought a t-shirt or one for Elsa since it had been such a cold week.  Welcome to Florida.  It does that.  I just forget sometimes.     I sure wish I could attach some of the photos I took but for some reason, my usual method of importing photos is no longer working on this computer.  So I will have to wait for my daughter, who seems to know all things computer, to return.     Marcos caught a good-size trout...the only scout who did...and , Boy, was he ever excited!  I have a photo of that too.      So we slept pretty well in our enormous tent and had lots of help putting it up (den leader, Jay)and taking it down (2 of the dads).  I was grateful for all the time saved.  

On the way home we stopped at the Dollar Store because I need paper towels and I promised the kids One thing each.  Elsa chose one of those microphones that is plastic and looks like a big ice-cream cone and is not electric or battery operated.  It just has sort-of echo power.  She loves to sing.  Marcos chose a pair of little pipes, like bubble pipes, that came with a little ball that he could hold in the air by blowing the pipe.  By the time we arrived at my house to pick up my mail, he decided he had made the wrong choice and that he MUST have a microphone also because Elsa would not share.  So I ended driving Back to the dollar store...ugh....and buying another one in a different color.  Then a good third of the way back they sang Freddie Mercury....OH MAMA....I DON'T WANNA DIE..... at the top of their lungs, magnified by the microphones.  Marcos even knows all the words.  After that they fought for a while and Elsa bopped him on the head a few times with her microphone until I threatened to pull over........finally arrived home....Ah....then the unloading began...and the bathing off all that camping dirt.  Over the next couple days I washed the sleeping bags & clothes and took out the tent and turned it inside out and back again and rolled it up nice & tight and all ready for the next trip in the spring.

Too bad about the photos!  Darn...I will add them later tho and will let everybody know.

My Home Away From Home

Right now my home is in my daughter's apartment near Jax Beach and I am caring for my 2 grandchildren.

My daughter, Eliza, just had one of the most momentous days of her life yesterday (Full Moon in Taurus, incidentally) at the immigration office in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.   After failing their first attempt to obtain a visa for her beloved two years ago, she has worked steadily at gathering proof of their devotion to each other.  Immigration people assume one is a phony until one proves otherwise.  (You can read all about it in her blog: AmorySabor.com).  The man whom she married on her last trip down there is from India and it has been an arduous task to assemble all the necessary documents, as well as an expensive one.  Corruption also plays a significant role.    When she revealed the news of their success on Facebook late yesterday, I could hardly get the words out, I was so excited.  I wept and when I was able to tell Marcos (he will soon be 9), he did too.  The children are aching for a dad and will be overjoyed to be reunited with the only dad they know.  Their original father is Dominican and, as it turned out, had another family.   He dropped the ball, which brought great suffering to the kids.     He stays in touch occasionally but the children barely remember him.    

 So this event will affect many lives.  I am so happy for my daughter and the children and may not have to be here quite as much in the future, freeing up my creative time.  I can't stand to be away from them for very long, though, which is why I am extremely desirous of making another trip to Maine soon.   Grandchild #3, Eli, age 4, is there and I have not seen him since May!...Much too long...In fact, I am hoping my son, Jake, will be getting some land up there before too long where I can start a big garden.  Then I would split my time between the north and the south.

Since tomorrow is Halloween, I will include a photo of Eliza & the kids at a recent Halloween party. (Elsa's smile is not exactly candid..haha). We trick or treat around this nice, safe neighborhood in the apartment complex and I hope they don't get too too much candy- but of course they will.    We need to carve our pumpkin asap.

Next blog will be in November... going camping with the Boy Scouts this weekend and I sure hope it warms up a little.  We were just socked with cold weather while our northern neighbors suffer through Hurricane Sandy.   Just went swimming in the ocean last week and now it feels suddenly like winter!