grandparents | One Summer At Home

Let’s wrap up last week’s recap and mentally prepare ourselves for a week of no One Summer At Home. I’ll be on vacation – from life, the blog, and even — gasp — Facebook.

On Wednesday, we went to Oma and Opa’s, and, great news, no one got kicked out of the pool. The other good news is that Rosie and Teddy are getting along quite well, if you count her stealing his bed again as “quite well.” But look how nicely they walk with Oma!

At the pool, we played some low-volume Marco Polo and I also introduced them to Sharks and Minnows, which we used to play at our neighborhood pool growing up. Our deep end was 8’6″, and in our version of Shark, the shark treaded water in the middle and yelled “Shark!” and then all the minnows would attempt to swim across the bottom of the pool to the other side. Since tag was too easy, the shark had to drag your body to the surface of the pool in order to catch you. This resulted in a lot of underwater fisticuffs and I believe helped prepare me for my short lived water polo career in college. For Hazy and George, I did a JV version where I was the shark and they couldn’t get tagged if they were underwater. I let them make it across a few times before completely annihilating them. I’m not a monster.

After we worked up an appetite playing games at the pool, we came home to a feast of Chinese “lion’s head.” Although Opa tried to convince George that it was in fact a lion’s head, lion’s head is in fact made up of ground pork meatballs (the head) with sauteed napa cabbage (the mane) and it’s exquisite.

Chinese "lion's head" meal — I ate until I felt sick and then ate a little more.

On Thursday, we stayed local. First, we did our popsicle walk with Rosie.

popsicle time — These poor kids can’t eat a GD popsicle without me making them take a selfie. Whatever. Guess who buys them those popsicles?

Then, we headed to our awesome new Jamaica Plain library, where I ambitiously/foolishly took out two books for myself to read on vacation. The turds busied themselves with searching for all the Star Wars books in the entire Boston Public Library.

computers at Jamaica Plain public library — “Help us find these 8,202 books please.”

Usually, my M.O. is that I buy fun activities at the beginning of the summer and tell the kids I’m gonna save them for a “special day” and then forget all about them until I clean the side closet sometime in October. But not this summer! I’ve already used the Giant Bubble kit, and Thursday I whipped out the H20GO triple water slide!

It was all fun and games until we decided to all go on the slide together. After all, it is a triple slide, right? I went in the middle and somehow ended up basically throwing my entire weight on George’s leg. Given that I launched myself pretty hard and also have eaten ice cream/popsicles 9 days out of 10 this summer, it wasn’t pretty. When the kids were babies, I could interpret what each of their different cries meant. It’s harder now, but I can definitely tell a fake cry from a real one, and sadly this was a real one. For a few tense moments, I thought I had broken his leg, but it turned out it was pretty superficial. I eventually got him to get back on the slide, as long as I promised not to go at the same time. You’ll be happy to know that George has his full leg strength back now and I have not been shamed out of eating frozen snacks.

Friday was another slow news day. The kids woke up fairly early and did some Star Wars themed coloring in the toy pit.

Star Wars fan art — I guarantee my kids can name more fictional Star Wars planets than real ones. Although, to my credit, I did recently teach them about Uranus so I could tell them the joke I made up. (“Which planet has the most poop on it?” “Uranus”)

I had planned on taking them to LegoLand. We have a couple of discount coupons and it’s one of their favorite places on earth. I’m also a fan, especially of the entire city of Boston made out of LEGO bricks. However, after the coloring, there was a whole lot of fighting and whining, and I just didn’t want to reward them for being so uncool. At lunch time, I asked them if they thought their behavior was worthy of a trip to LegoLand and they both said no. Sometimes they surprise me in their rare moments of self-awareness. So instead of going on rides and watching 4D movies (the 4th “D” is fake precipitation!), we did a quick jaunt to Ocean State Job Lot to look for some special unnamed dog treats that Rosie likes. Almost as exciting.

special shopping carts — Do anyone else’s kids embarrass them by running right into the motorized carts for disabled people?

We couldn’t find the mystery treats but found a designer impostor version and hoped for the best. We did find Star Wars Jell-O Jiggler molds though! [Fun fact: I used to work on the Jell-O account and the one thing that really stayed with me is that scientists did an EEG on a lime green Jell-O mold and found that its brain wave pattern was similar to that of a human brain.]

The second hardest part is that they didn’t actually like the taste of the Jigglers.

You have to admit, they look pretty awesome though.

I’m happy to report that they were much less combative/whiny the rest of the day, so at night, we continued with our Star Wars theme and met Matty at the Hatch Shell to see Rogue One.

It was such a treat to hang out with the whole family (even Rosie!), plus Matty brought me a literal treat, this tropical drink freezer pop slushie thing. He loves me! Rosie got seriously alarmed when <SPOILER ALERT> the Death Star blew up Jedha, which made me think George’s repeated playings of the Imperial Death March had gotten through to her.

Must. Stop. Empire.

You’re now about to begin a full week without the OSAH blog. May the Force be with you.

My kids are blessed in many ways (see: our summer ice cream count), but especially in that they have two grandmothers and a grandfather whom they get to see frequently. This week, we were lucky enough to see Grammy on Tuesday and Oma & Opa on Wednesday (with special bonus Skype with my grandmother, Nana, speaking of lucky). I feel so fortunate to have family nearby to help. When you’re taking care of people/turds all day every day, it’s such a gift to have someone else take care of you.

On Tuesday, we spent the day lounging by/in/around the pool with Grammy. The pool is cool, clean, stocked with rafts and toys, and we’re almost always the only ones there.

Between George’s survival stroke and Hazy’s raft-steering abilities, we’re ready for a shipwreck.

I had to get some work done, and I couldn’t have picked a nicer home office.

As if it wasn’t enough that Grammy entertained the kids while I worked and made them their favorite lunches, she also made me this restaurant-worthy salad.

She doesn’t even let me help with the dishes after. Swoon.

Grammy had an event to get to, so we left before dinner. At home, the kids helped me make my semi-famous tofu and rice. George mainly wore this cute outfit and pressed down the rice cooker button; Hazy learned to smash garlic and cut the ginger. (She still had a slightly swollen face, so was not ready for face photos.) I’d show you more, but it’s a secret family recipe. (Rest assured, magnesium is not an ingredient.)

Wednesday, we headed down to Oma & Opa’s. We spent the morning at the pond, which we had all to ourselves for a little while.

There are fish in this pond. I know this because one bit me on a scab that’s on my foot. I had to pretend it didn’t hurt so I wouldn’t scare the kids, but between us, IT HURT.

We enjoyed swimming, digging holes, modeling the tubes, and fighting/crying over who got to put their tube in the backseat first and whose had to be jammed in second. All equally fun activities! Next time we might play “Imma Shank Your Tube With a Pen And See Who’s Crying.” Just an idea, could be fun.

Apparently, a few weeks ago, George called my dad “brah.” If you know my dad, this is hilarious. He’s just not a “brah” type; he’s not even a “bro” type. But, Opa took it in stride, and asked George if “brah” was short for “broccolini,” and now that is George and Opa’s nickname for each other. So, naturally George wore his “#BROS4LIFE” shirt and he and Opa recreated it.

Opa gets to be the hamburger, because, duh, mustache.

So that happened.

Also, Oma has been branching out and making her crack cookies for non-family members, despite my strong objections. However, this time we were cool with it, because she used the extra dough to make us this batch.

Why so serious, Oma? Is it because you’re regretting making non-family members the cookies? I get it.

Usually, Oma goes on our excursions with us, but on this day, my fur-brother, Teddy, was sick, so Oma had to stay home with him. So we headed to the beach solo in the afternoon. White Horse is an awesome beach, except for its dubious water conditions. There was a ton of reddish seaweed in the water, and also a lot of it semi-dried up on the beach. I say semi-dried up, because when you walk on it, your foot sinks down like you’re walking in spoiled chocolate pudding with a thin crab-scented creme brulée crust. Even typing up that description makes me cringe. I wore my flip flops to walk down to the water, and it was still gross.

Just avoid all the dark areas and you’ll be fine!

There’s also this somewhat ominous shark sign, but hey, good photo acting opportunity:

Not sure what the Crocs add to the photo acting, but I believe in leaving the actor to his craft.

Once you’re past the crab pudding section, it’s actually quite nice. There’s a sandy beach and while there’s lots of reddish seaweed in the water, it’s quite dispersed and you don’t really feel it.

The sand was perfect for making sand castles, sand sea turtles, or you know, a classic sand toilet. Hazy was very proud of her sand toilet, complete with plumbing that opened up to a tank in the back.

The kids enjoyed burying each other in rocks and finding a bunch of “special” rocks to add to their collections. These special rocks, by the way, get added to the Mac Wagon, which I have to painstakingly drag through the sand back to the car. This is why I limit them to ~~only the most special~~ one cupful.

Family Portrait (Sand Toys Bag subbing poorly for Matty)

We capped off a great day with spaghetti and homemade meatballs, followed by – what else? – ice cream. Then we had our Skype session with Nana, my 100-year old grandmother and undisputed Cutest Person On Earth, and my wonderful Auntie Julie (“Auntie Juju”). George spent the entire session trying to fill the camera lens with his eye.

Thank you, Grammy, Oma, Opa, Nana and Auntie Juju, for reminding us how incredibly lucky we are.

A working mom takes the summer off

One Summer At Home

Tag Archives: grandparents

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A working mom takes the summer off