Nana Files the Second

I learned a few things yesterday.
Number one, don't feed the little darlings their yummiest things for breakfast, it's a waste of a good appetite. Save the yummy things for dinner. So we had eggs and french toast. Scarlet gobbled it down but London was playing hard to get.
Fine, I said, you can eat it later. Less chocolate milk for you tomorrow.
So she pulled her craft bins out of the pantry and concentrated on her art for a while.
The blue face in the top right corner is me. Be jealous.

And this is her whole family, including Wrangler and Max, the cat.

And after an hour or so of painting, Miss London cleaned her plate and declared it was time for ice cream. Er, okay, why not?
So they ate little bowls of ice cream.

Scarlet got pretty mad when her bowl was empty. This was after she forgave me.

While Scarlet took her nap today we made banana bread. As soon as she woke up we left, me pulling the wagon full of two girls, a picnic, and jackets. (Lesson number two, always take jackets.) This lake is halfway to the park and we quacked at the ducks and admired the scenery. 

We picnicked on cookies and banana bread (tasty! said London) and apples and ran around the play structure and mostly I chased Scarlet while trying to simultaneously keep an eye on the wagon and on London, who is remarkably daring in new situations for a timid child. One poor little girl threw her coat into our wagon and took a drink out of one of our cups, thinking it was her family's wagon. She was so embarrassed when her dad told her what she had done that she started crying and they had to go home. 

I was trying to get a good picture of Scarlet's gleeful expression so I stopped the swing. She stuck her little nose up in the air and turned her head away and wouldn't look at me until I pushed the swing again. Not even eighteen months old and a force of nature already.

The sun was low in the sky when I finally convinced London it was time to go home. I decided to take a different route to avoid a nasty road crossing that hadn't been apparent on Google maps. We passed right by the water tower. I love water towers, for no significant reason.

On the way home we picked a few pansies from flowerbeds at the intersections. London said her favourite colour was pink and the pansies weren't pink so she didn't want any. Fine, I said. After Scarlet had ripped apart several differing shades of pansies, London did a little pout because she didn't have a flower. Well, sez I, you only wanted a pink flower and pansies aren't pink. Do you want a different colour next time we see some? She nodded. And collected a purple pansy at the next corner. 

Score for Nana!

It was a long walk home because of our wee distractions, especially when Scarlet decided that she was going to be a hellion unless I let her walk with me. It was only a little over three miles round trip, but pulling the wagon made it seem more like double that distance. Plus, I am not in the best shape of my life, sadly. Five minutes before we reached the house I looked back at the girls and London was sitting upright with her eyes closed. She had fallen asleep. I put her head on my purse so that she wouldn't fall out of the wagon.

And so went the second day. One of the blessings of being a nana is being able to look after grandchildren when their parents take some much-needed time to be together. It makes me a bit sad that the girls probably won't remember this weekend, but perhaps some day, when they get older, they will read this and get an inkling of how much their nana adores them. 

The Nana Files:Part 1

Whenever I arrive at Charlie and Sam's house, I usually get the most enthusiastic reception from the weimaraner. Not that the rest of the family snubs me, they just don't follow me everywhere I go, leaning up against me and trying to knock me over. 

I am in Texas to spend a few days with the little girls while Mommy and Daddy have a long weekend on their own. Luckily, Wrangler went to spend the weekend in a kennel, or I might have spent the whole time on the floor.

Scarlet looked a bit confused when she woke up on the first morning to find Nana was the only adult in the house. After a few minutes she seemed to accept her fate and snuggled in while she drank her green juice and watched nursery rhymes on the telly.

London had a whole list of things that she was "so excited" for us to do together, so I didn't get to sit on my laurels for too long. I thought she might like this hairstyle because it kept her hair out of her face. 

After a morning of doing bubbles outside and playing, Scarlet went down for her nap and London promptly went into event planner mode. First on the agenda was cookie-making. Chocolate chip with pink sprinkles. I tried to talk her out of the sprinkles but no deal. London is quite the little baker for being not even four yet. I turned away for a moment and a rather large amount of sprinkles went into the dough. My plan had been for her to shake the sprinkles on top of the cookies so that not all of them would be sprinkled, but I was foiled before I even started. 

Then on to the Valentine craft that Mommy had bought at Hobby Lobby. Or so London informed me. And look what happened to her hair. She went to the bathroom and took an inordinately long time so I went to check on her and she had very carefully taken out the band that held the two braids together, unwoven the braids, and left her hair in the two pony tails. I don't like it tight, she said when I tried to tidy up the pony tails. 

Okay then. Scruffy ponies it will be.

She really stuck to the job and pretty soon there were three hearts stuck to every ladybug wing. That's 24 of them, in case you were wondering. Nana had to do the rest of the gluing but she helped by sorting the pieces out and handing them to me as I needed them.

Then it was time for a cookie break. 

Delicious, she said.

We went for a walk, me pulling the big wagon, in the afternoon to look for a neighbourhood playground, but I didn't do my research before we left and the girls were getting cold so we turned around and came home after about half a mile, determining we would try again the next day. Dinner, another cookie or two, and a movie, and pretty soon we were all in bed.