Nana's Cookies

Sarah was having a bit of a bad day until Nana started making cookies. Then Sarah went and helped, worked diligently, and then enjoyed eating the cookies afterwards, too. (We all enjoyed the cookies.)

Working On A Cookie (Shower and Hair By Mama)

Nana's Kitchen

Stephen Jumping

Stephen loves a new game: jumping down off a high place and into Papa's arms. It takes trust and Stephen is full of it. He laughs and immediately asks to be put back up again. Here we got one early morning time on video.

Stephen Playing

One thing I love about being at Nana's house is that the kids can play outside more easily than back home in the city. Stephen was ambling about for quite a while getting in to one thing and another and just being a boy. Papa likes it but Mama not so much because he gets dirty. Although even she says it might help him avoid a dust allergy later on.

Doggie

A stray dog was hanging around and the kids wanted to pet it. Papa helped Sarah get some cereal crumbs poured out on the ground and the dog started eating.

Apparently it ate a couple of pebbles because Sarah started asking, "Why the doggie eats wocks?"

Then Sarah picked up some pebbles in her hand and offered them to the dog, who declined to eat them. "Papa, why the doggie not eating wocks?"

Stephen, on the other hand, tried to pet the doggie from a place of safety as much as possible. Here he is hiding behind a wood stump at Tio Guero's tire shop. 

Sarah has previously been more fearful of getting too close to dogs, but she has overcome it. She asked me how to get this doggie to follow her around, so I had her feed it some cereal out of her hand a couple of times, which did the trick pretty well.

Sarah: I'm happy with the doggie. I like the doggie.

Pretending

Stephen pretended to eat for the first time. Papa pretended to eat something, and then offered some to Sarah, who also pretended to eat it, and then Stephen, who also pretended to accept, chew and enjoy the imaginary food.

It reminded me of when Sarah first enjoyed pretend candy when we were on our trip to NY with Grandma and Grandpa. She was asking for candy, which we didn't have, so I pretended to take some supposedly very tasty candy out of my mouth and offer it to her. She (thankfully) accepted it and ate it quite happily instead of real candy.

Country Jungle Gym

Sarah: "Oooohh! It's for a Old McDonald's Had A Farm?"

Uh-Oh

I remember that when I was a kid, I got a taste of some mildly alcoholic root beer that my dad was making, and it tasted so bad to me that even now as an adult I still don't like the flavor of alcohol. So you might figure that the same thing would work with the kids. But the only problem is that when they tasted it, they liked it. Now what. (Don't worry, nobody let them drink any).