Jill at the Beach

Cory and Steph are celebrating 1 year of marriage at the beach this week. Jill went with them for the weekend and now she is staying with me. I love this picture of her at the beach.

Things to Do with Children

Here are some before and after pictures Stephanie took of the children on some recent expeditions.

Much of my relationship with children has to do with repetition. For one thing, I am kind of lazy and don't know a lot of children's songs and games. So we do the same ones over and over. They seem to like it.

When rocking my children to sleep, I often relied on songs I knew, even if they were not children's songs. Unfortunately, Jaime remembers Blood on the Saddle, Found a Peanut, and 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

When Cory was little, a cute Christmas song by Roger Miller was popular. Little Toy Trains. I sang it to him even when it wasn't Christmas time. He would try to sing along. After my grandson was born, I found a CD with that song and all of my grandchildren know it by heart. They beg  for me to play all the time, but I save it for Christmas now. (There is a link to this song on the right side of this Blog.)

When Jonah was little, he stayed with me every Friday night. I don't know who first showed him the very scary movie, Jurassic Park, but it was his favorite. So, every Friday night we climbed into bed with homemade chocolate milkshakes and watched the same video. We did it again for old time's sake a few months ago. The video sits on top of the DVD player in the kid room. He is the only child who took a liking to that movie, though Jill tries to watch it to be like Jonah. He and I know every word and nuance and it never fails to put both of us to sleep almost immediately.

Jill and Jonah watched Peter Pan over and over when they were both little. Such a sweet little movie. I like the part where they fly out the nursery window the best. I loved Toy Story 2 so much that we watched that over and over, too. Such clever dialogue. But it did leave Jill with a fear of toys that move on their own for a long time. She even made me hide the toy Woody in the closet for a while. She was never afraid of Buzz Lightyear, though.

When the girls get out of the bathtub, they still want to play Ridey Horsey and Little Bunny Foo Foo while wrapped in a towel on my lap. My daughter saw us last night when she was picking up Mia and said, "Are you still doing that???"

Days gone by riding in Grandma's car

We still drive around in the car and listen to the baby CD that first Jill and then Mia loved. It is little English nursery rhymes and ABC songs. I am so used to it that I have been known to forget to change it when the kids get out of the car.  Lately, I have been playing the only remaining CD of a set by Time Warner called Senior Prom. It has a lot of sweet songs that I love. The girls know all the words to Born Too Late,  Devil or Angel, I'm Mr. Blue, Dream, Dream, Dream, etc. I tell them how I used to play Devil or Angel over and over on my record player at home. It must have driven my parents crazy.

Jonah's daddy objected when I used to rock him to sleep with James Taylor's Sweet Baby James. He said I would give Jonah "bad taste in music" but I disagree. Am I stunting their growth or just giving them some sweet childhood memories with their grandma? I guess time will tell.

Looking back on this I notice no mention of books and reading. We do have beloved books that have been in the children's library for years. I confess that I love to read myself but I am not a patient reader to others. I feel a lot of guilt about that especially since my grandson has had a lot of trouble learning to read. I am trying to make up now for my past mistakes. I guess all those nights eating ice cream and watching Jurasic Park reruns could have been put to better use.

Jaime never liked to read though she was good at it. I think she discovered Cliff's Notes in grade school. She finally had to read in college. I don't think she reads much for pleasure even now. My son, on the other hand, had a whole shelf of Children's Classics that I never read to him. I found out later that he read them to himself and loved them.

When the grandchildren stay with me, I entertain them with art supplies. Mia especially loves art and wants all her work hung on the fridge. What if she becomes an artist because there was nothing else to do at Grandma's house?

Mia Back in School

I am so glad that Mia is back in school. Of all the things she has had to deal with -- the scar from the dog bite, the seizures, the yucky medicine and not being able to eat a lot of her favorite foods -- she has only really complained to me one time.

She stayed with me for a couple of weeks after she had been diagnosed with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. The school would not let her come back until the nurse agreed. There were some questions about medication, for instance. Then the school closed for a few days for their annual vacation.

Mia came up to me one day and said sadly, "I can't go to school."

I said, "Oh, yes, you can, and you will!" And the next week, she did.

I'm glad it is the same school and the same loving teacher. She is learning so much and she loves the routine. And no seizures.

(I picked up Mia one afternoon and there was Ms. Rodriguez watching a room full of playing children. She was bringing one child at a time to sit down so she could take their picture. She was very patient and careful to get a good picture while calling instructions to various children over her shoulder and stopping to help others. What a great teacher!)

Grandparents' Breakfast

Tomorrow is grandparents' breakfast at Jonah and Jill's school. After last year, I have a plan. I will have them both spend the night. I think I will make spaghetti and garlic bread for supper. Then we will get up very early and get to the school by 7:00 (is that early enough?) and park in the handicapped spot right out front. Then we will wait in the car until school opens at 7:30. Then we have to visit both classrooms to say they will be attending the breakfast and then we can stand in line. Last year they had some cold scrambled eggs, sausages, sweet rolls and fruit along with milk, juice and coffee. I think I will bring my own coffee.

Last year, I waited too long to get there and had to park about 4 blocks away and then walk all over the school to collect the kids and then found out we had to visit their classrooms. My knees were killing me and I was limping badly by the time I got to the back of a very long line. It was held outside in the covered pavillion and it was steamy hot as it will probably be tomorrow.

Why do I do it? Well, it's for the kids and not for the breakfast. And it is fun to talk to the other grandparents. The school was surprised last year by the huge turnout. Wish me luck.

School

I went to the school last night to learn about the curriculum. My grandson has two teachers. His home room, math and science teacher is a man. Jonah says he is the best teacher ever. He has math homework every night. They are doing graphs. I met his language and reading teacher for the first time. She seemed very nice but I am worried.

Jonah has struggled with reading. He repeated kindergarten. His teachers have been involved and caring. He has gone to summer school for reading every single summer. He has had tutors. We knew he had some learning difficulties but it took a long time to get him tested. When they finally tested him, the results were inconclusive. He didn't have dyslexia but he had a very difficult time staying on task. Finally, my daughter took him to a doctor and insisted that he take medication for ADHD. He started on a small dose of Concerta and that has helped a lot. But by then he was in fourth grade.

To make things worse, his younger cousin, Jill, is one of those children who seems to read very naturally and easily. She is in the gifted program at the same school.

I have helped in his classroom every year, come in for lunch sometimes and chaperoned many field trips. He likes that, but it was only in the middle of last year when he finally started really letting me help him with his homework. We worked on a long project on the computer and he got an A. After that, he started to cooperate. Every afternoon he came to my house and we did his homework. I was horrified. He had great ideas and a good vocabulary, but he couldn't sound out words and his spelling was almost unreadable. I think the final straw was when he kept spelling the word "make" as "mack". I admit to freaking out when I realized the depth of the problem. Even then we did start having success. His behavior was perfect and his grades improved a lot.

I made him write sentences. "I bake a cake and take it to the lake." and "I pack it in a sack and take it back." That got to be a joke with us except that I still see him do it. Just the other day, I saw it again - "mack". I also made him correct every single paper he did for spelling and grammar. He resisted a little but he did it. Sometimes his teacher gave him extra credit for that. He had a tutor at the beginning of the summer who seemed to help. I took him and stayed for the lessons. She said things like, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." I was feeling hopeful, but then it came time for his annual visit with his dad in Tennessee. That trip was very important to him. He didn't get back in time to make up the tutoring. Now I'm wondering. Am I sure he knows his vowels?

His mother tries to help him but she has her hands full working all day, taking care of Jonah's little sister and making supper every night. She investigated a special school last year that seemed tailor made for Jonah but it was very expensive. There was a possibility for a scholarship, but then his grades improved and she let him stay on with his friends in the neighborhood school.

So now I met the language teacher and this is what she said.

She said they were doing a lot of independent reading. She talked about the importance of finding the right level book and the book they read at school should be the same book they read at home. I have never been able to get Jonah to finish the most simple book. Even when I read to him, he loses interest. He loves books, but he wants the encyclopedia-type books about snakes and dinosaurs, etc. The teacher said that they meet in small groups or one on one while the class reads independently. She said she doesn't want to know what happened in the book in these meetings but how the child feels about what he read. Jonah can read a page or two and have lots of feelings. She said the school library will be open next week. She talked about AR where they get points each time they finish a book and take a test on the computer. Then she said this is an FCAT testing year which is pass or fail to go to the next grade. She said they don't worry about spelling at this stage and they don't have spelling tests. They study the structure of words such as endings, etc. Spelling tests and the grade that followed seemed to be the only time he learned to spell new words.

One mother raised her hand and said her son kept spelling little words wrong. The teacher said, well, they shouldn't be making mistakes on sight words. So, Jonah is not the only one. Time was up. I didn't bother to ask any questions. I am going to write a note to the language teacher and explain why we are correcting all his papers and ask her to be supportive.

I have some flash cards for sight words and multiplication tables. They are going to grow a garden in science class and do their science projects at school. Jonah will like that. I feel like this year is our last chance.

Mom's Crazy Clock

I bought this clock as a present for my mother. It chimed every quarter, half and full hour for a while. For the past twenty years, however, it only chimes two or three times a year - always at 1:00, 1:15 and 1:30 - sometimes a.m., sometimes p.m. It startles us. We've long since become accustomed to its silence.

Once when it was new we had a mishap. My ex-husband was remodeling the kitchen in my mother's condo. He did a beautiful job. He always said the free jobs he did for people caused him the most problems. He was hammering away to remove an old cabinet when the clock on the other side of the wall fell down and sliced the back of the picture tube off of my mother's beautiful console television. I found out then that a beautiful and HEAVY piece of furniture with a broken television is essentially worthless. There was nothing we could do but buy her a new television from our own tight budget. The clock was fine. Maybe that was when it stopped chiming. I can't remember. It hangs on my wall now secured by a very large and sturdy hook. Someday, I guess this inexpensive, quirky clock will belong to Jaime or Cory.

Slice of Life - Under the Sea

Slice of Life is a weekly prompt to encourage writers to tell personal history stories. Click on the link to participate.




Jonah and Jill are lucky to live in Florida. These pictures are from a recent visit to the Florida Aquarium with Cory and Stephanie on their recent "staycation." They also took Jonah with them to a magical place near Ocala called Rainbow River. It is a natural springfed river where we used to go when Cory and Jaime were little. They got tubes and floated down the river with snorkels and masks. Stephanie said the kids had their faces in the water all day long. We don't get to the beach as often as we should, but Jonah loves to fish and swim at the beach on a big lake near our friend's house. He is my little nature boy.