Thursday, June 18, 2015

A Summer Day With Jack

Jack with a fresh new haircut and a lost front tooth

Yesterday our daughter needed us to watch our grandson Jack for the day.  Jack will be seven in a couple weeks.  He came with his eyes glued to his Samsung tablet.  I was trying to figure out how to limit his screen time, but I think his parents were way ahead of me.  Within a short time, he came to me asking for a charger.  His tablet needed charging.  I told him we only have Apple products and those chargers won't work on his tablet.  He accepted it well, and so our day began.

Today my husband posted this on Facebook.


This is exactly what we did.  We did a bunch of ordinary things with him.  First of all Jack and I did a little cleaning up and vacuuming.  Then we went around and looked at the birdhouses and talked about the bluebirds and the orioles that were coming in large numbers to eat the grape jelly we put out.  Next we checked the hanging baskets, and Jack picked a ripe cherry tomato and popped it in his mouth.  He told us that 7 times 8 is 56 and that any number divided by its self is one.  These were taught to him by his brother Sam.  So we asked him if he knew that any number times 0 equals 0.  He was going to see if his brother knew that.


After a while it was time to help papa.  We had two dehumidifiers that would frost up and another that didn't work at all.  They were all old and were not energy efficient.  They were just sitting in our storeroom.  It was Jack and papa's job to bring them out to the garage and take them apart so the part with the cooling freon could be taken to the recycler.


Jack needed help getting them up the steps from the basement, but after they got to the top, it was free sailing for him.


We found Jack some safety glasses and a carpenter apron.  Then they started taking apart the dehumidifiers.  They would take the screws out, and Jack would put them in his apron pocket to keep them from falling on the garage floor.



Despite the best efforts to keep the screws from falling on the floor, one escaped.  That is where the big magnet with a handle came in handy.  Jack really liked using that.  He found the missing screw and then proceeded to see what else it would stick to.


He discovered a contraption in our garage that he wasn't sure what it was.  Papa told him it was for crushing aluminum cans.  Jack came running into the house to ask me if we had any cans to crush.  We don't drink much soda, but I found a couple for him to crush.  I think this was better than an expensive toy.  He was sorry we didn't have more cans to crush.


After lunch and some snacks, it was almost time for mom to come.  Imagine how excited she was when he wanted to bring home a souvenir from the day.  It was a fan from inside one of the dehumidifiers.


He had big plans for the fan.  He did a few experiments during the afternoon.  One of them included a control knob and the crushed soda cans.  He would spin the fan by hand until the can flew off.


The next adventure of the day was driving to a nearby city to see his sister play softball.  I went along because I don't get to many games.  In fact, this was the first one this season.  Papa stayed home with great grandpa so I could go.  Jack gets a little bored with the games, but he really liked playing on the playground adjacent to the ball diamond.


Our granddaughter Melissa also gets a little bored with the games.  She likes being on the team, but she will never be a dedicated star athlete.  She isn't the least bit competitive.



Melissa would rather be performing in plays.  Here she is as the Wicked Witch in Snow White.  She really does look angry because Snow White was the fairest of them all.


I wasn't able to see Sam yesterday.  Sam, Melissa's and Jack's brother, was with his dad.  They had a very hard day.  One of Sam's teammates from his football team was tragically killed in a ATV accident.  The whole team went to the funeral home visitation.  This is the first death experience for many of the boys and being it was a friend made it very very difficult.  I am very proud of them for being able to do such a hard thing.  I'm not sure I could have gone through with it at age ten or eleven.

So as my husband's posting says, we tasted the tomatoes, we cried at death and we made an ordinary day into to something special to remember.  I think Jack enjoyed it too.

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