Afternoons with Charlotte

Charlotte often comes down to visit us after school on the days she is here. She tells me she is coming to hang out. She climbs on the Street Strider and ‘works out’ for minutes at a time. She chews gum, always asking first. I have told her that she is welcome to get a piece of gum anytime and no need to ask each time. She responded, “I know. It’s nice to ask though.” So, she asks, and I always say yes.

She is only allowed to chew gum in our flat. In the past she had forgotten she had the gum and fallen asleep. It seems gum and her long blonde hair are attracted to each other. Megan had told us early on she doesn’t allow the kids gum because they forget to throw it out in the garbage, and it ends up in their hair or on the floor. Megan is fine with Charlotte having gum in our flat if I supervise the tossing out of gum. It works so far.

This afternoon Charlotte read her weekly page to me before she could “hang out.” Then she had sentences to write in response to questions about the story. Testing for comprehension. I enjoy listening to her sounding out and spelling her full sentence responses. She is doing pretty good with it even when it can feel painstakingly slow to an experienced reader/writer like me.  

Charlotte also likes to make up stories to tell me or act out stories in her head. Megan liked acting out stories (along with her sister, Lauren) when she was younger. I think Charlotte enjoys having me as an audience member. She plays board games with Grandpa Joe and imagination and creativity is my bailiwick.

Yesterday, I was super tired in the afternoon and laid down for a nap. I think it is still a side-effect of the Shingrix vaccine from this past weekend. Charlotte has gotten comfortable coming into our bedroom to wake me up so she can visit with me. After she roused me from the nap we read. Then she played Scrabble for the first time with Grandpa. One of the words she played was mob. I asked her if she knew what the word meant, and she told me it meant the enemy. At dinner last night I mentioned this to Jeremy and Megan. It seems there is a video game that refers to the mob as the enemy.

Joe modified the Scrabble game so that they just built words anywhere on the board. They don’t keep score and they didn’t worry about building off existing words. I think as the game advanced; they began to do that. Joe is creative in adjusting games to the kids’ levels and building their strategy skills over time.

Caleb prefers to spend his afterschool time building Lego items. It is his way of unwinding from his day. By dinner he is ready to be social and play a game with grandpa.