Isaac and Mona-2 weeks in Yuma!

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On April 22, Justin drove Isaac and Mona over to Yuma to stay with us for TWO weeks! We were so excited to have this extended time with both of them in our new home at CVR. They were busy everyday.

Our outdoor living space set up in the carport was great to have. It really gave Mona and Isaac additional space to hang out and play.

TIME FOR BUILDING, AND LOTS OF CREATIVE PLAY.

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TIME FOR PUZZLES. Puzzles are so good for kids to do. It is a fun activity that actually works the same part of the brain that both Algebra and Geometry uses!

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TIME FOR BOOKS.

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Reading a favorite book to dolly.

TIME WITH NANA – Fun, learning activities
While I was a middle school teacher for most of my teaching career, I did start out as a kindergarten teacher. That was my dream job when I entered the teaching field. Therefore, I can’t help but look for fun activities and toys that stimulate creative play, develop gross motor and fine motor skills, and/or help develop skills for reading, language, math, and problem solving.

Since Isaac will be starting kindergarten in a few months, it was time to introduce them both to cutting and pasting. They did amazingly well for the first time.

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At times Isaac was a little quick to cut before making sure he was lined up on the line, but he did really well. No fingers were snipped, although mine felt pretty close a couple of times. It was a workout for their little hands, but they quickly learned how to make the scissors “reopen” and to keep their “thumb on top” before squeezing to make the cut. When they were done cutting out the shapes they wanted, they used a glue stick to make a picture with them.

A few days later they cut out flower petals, a stem and leaves to make a Mother’s Day card for Erika. They did a FABULOUS job! Mona added the grass and a sun for the picture.

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We spent some time on various pages from preschool workbooks that included tracing lines, following paths, coloring according to directions and more. I could really see a huge improvement in their coloring when they used the triangular crayons that I found at Walmart. The triangular pencils and owl pencil grips that I ordered through Amazon worked great. The grips were awesome for easy training of a proper pencil grip and work for both left-handed, and right-handed preferences. After using the pencil with the grip, Mona transferred that positioning to the triangular crayons. WOW–her coloring was amazing–when she wanted it to be. She even said how pretty it was! It does take more concentration and effort. I can’t wait to see her coloring by the fall!

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Finding NEW ways to play with one of their favorite toys–the colorful counting bears.

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STEM/STEAM ACTIVITIES via KiwiCo Crates
Crate 1- Dinosaurs
What fun it was creating the dinosaur “costume”. They each took turns wearing it. While I started reading the “Step Into Reading book, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Isaac acted it out! It was great!

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They each created their own dinosaur fossil.

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Crate 2 -Rainforest Theme
This quickly became one of our favorite crates so far. Isaac and Mona decorated the puppet that turned from a caterpillar to a Monarch butterfly. Isaac on his own held the caterpillar up vertically for the time it became a chrysalis, then flipped out the butterfly. We watched a couple YouTube clips about becoming a butterfly, and a frog egg to a frog. I was impressed with their interest and being able to tell the story of the metamorphosis that occurs.

I read The Great Kapok Tree to them. Mona preferred to continue playing with the butterfly puppet, but Isaac was enthralled with the illustrations. We even went through it a second time. Isaac found new animals on each page that he missed the first time through.

Another activity provided was making a “rainstick” that also included putting a top on it to make it a Kapok tree for a balancing game. How many pompoms will it hold?

Sing and Dance Time with Papa!
I’m so impressed with how good Barry is at creative play with both the kids, and even making up songs when he does “ordinary” things with them. One time Barry was using “Macho Man” and changing some of the lyrics. Isaac loved this one and would start singing it out of the blue. Here, all three of them were dancing and singing. It is no wonder they adore Papa!

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Bike Riding
Carefree Village Resort – CVR is a great place for the kids to ride their balance bikes! The car and golf cart traffic is extremely limited at this point. Isaac and Mona fly on their balance bikes! Isaac also brought his Spiderman, traditional, two-wheeler with pedals. It is still a little big for him, so he preferred the first week to use his balance bike.

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Children this young are not a common sight within the park. We weren’t sure how those still here would react, but everyone was genuinely pleased to see the kids, and stopped to talk with them. Jeanne Albers let them each pick a painted Minion-like rock from her collection. Interactions with others occurred while out walking or biking, bowling, and swimming.

BOWLING: Yes, we have a four-lane bowling alley on site. Kids are allowed to bowl, but I wasn’t sure if Isaac and Mona would be old enough to try it here. Mike and Marcia, the bowling alley managers, reassured us that they would be able to accommodate them. CVR has a “ramp” for little ones to put their ball on and push it down to roll down the lane to the pins! Sweet! It was pretty awesome. Isaac was so stoked. Pure joy! His face lit up every time he knocked several pins down. Mona was very excited initially…

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But on her first frame when she missed the 4 pins that were left standing, she was mad, and/or embarrassed. She gets embarrassed easily. She started crying and would not continue! No problem. Isaac was pumped and was ready to keep going!

Barry and I took the kids back a few days later. OMG! Isaac got the hang of it to push the ball harder, and then developed his own technique of running up to the ball to push it. It worked liked a charm. He added the use of the air feature on the ball-return rack to his preparation each frame. He would “cool and dry his hands” just like the pros do. LOL It worked. He was on fire! Isaac bowled a 132 and 196!!! Granted it was “7-pin, no-tap”. That’s where a strike is scored if the person gets 7 or more pins down with the first ball. But these scores are still better than lots of adults who do 7 pin no-tap. Isaac was beyond thrilled. We were all blown away. Mona sweetly cheered him on.

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Afterwards, Isaac wanted to go down the side to “the black curtain” to see what was behind it. Mike took us all for a behind the scene’s tour. It was very cool! He showed Isaac how the machine collects one set of pins and puts them into slots while a new set is lowered into place. He let Isaac turn the machine off.

We went back one more time before leaving for California on May 7. Thank you, Mike and Marcia for such a special memory. Marcia had picked up a bubbles tube for each of them. They loved playing with those later at our place.

LOTS of POOL TIME:
Isaac and Mona LOVED going to the pool. The first week we loaded all our pool necessities into the Jeep and headed over each day around 2 PM. We spent about two hours in the water. A lot of the time we had the pool to ourselves, but the kids were great at respecting others when they were present. Angel engaged with both Isaac and Mona for quite a while by playing with one of our water balls. It was nice to have so many residents compliment how well-behaved they were. They really are.

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The kids loved getting into the hot tub after a couple hours of swimming. The wind would kick up so we’d get into the hot tub to warm up–even though it was 80 degrees outside.

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The second week we changed it up. One night we went to the smaller, more shallow pool after dinner to experience the fire at the top of the four stone pillars at the pool during the sunset. We decided that we liked going for an hour after dinner. It wore them out nicely. We’d shower right there at the pool before going home. They were ready to go to bed when we got home, and fell asleep immediately! Plus we didn’t need to mess with sunscreen. Win Win.

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I knew mealtimes would be the biggest challenge. Isaac and Mona have a limited list of what they will eat. Mona is especially picky. She may like something one day and the next day “not like it”. Isaac can do the same, but not as often. They both will easily go into an immediate meltdown. We let them know the first day that I was NOT going to fix each person something different at each meal. They actually adjusted quite easily to one breakfast for everyone. I rotated fixing either, pancakes, french toast or scrambled eggs. They ate really well.

Lunch usually went well, too. They both discovered that they really liked Nana’s grilled cheese, egg salad sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, PBJ, as well as peanut butter and/ or jelly on crackers,. They ate 3/4 of a full sandwich every time. Isaac even ate the crusts most of the time! Because they ate great at mealtimes, and stayed busy in between, we had very few snacks. A few sliced apples worked great as a snack on days where we needed a snack.

Dinner was usually the most trying meal. How could I get them to at least try new foods, especially vegetables? If they tried new foods, (and that included a bite of whatever vegetable we had), and they ate the rest of their dinner, they would earn ice cream with a small cookie. They each had a couple stubborn meltdowns, but they didn’t last long. They soon realized these were our rules if they wanted dessert. The best part was they discovered that the main meal was something they liked after all.

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Erika told me earlier that they like shrimp, but it didn’t appear so. However, after Mona’s meltdown, she very quietly said she would try it. I helped her up to her seat. She took a bite of shrimp and loved it. She ate all of it! Then she tried the yellow squash “spaghetti noodles”, and loved them! It was fun to watch her totally enjoy her dinner. She definitely earned her ice cream and cookie! Isaac ate some of his shrimp, but then just couldn’t eat the rest –even with ketchup. He really tried, so he earned his ice cream that night.

Dinners that they both tried and liked: my meatloaf, salmon burgers, and Aidell’s garlic and gruyere cheese sausage. In fact, Isaac ate all of his sausage withOUT any ketchup!!

Isaac liked the wide spelt noodles with butter one night, and loved the cottage cheese I had. In fact, he said asked for more. He said that cottage cheese was his new favorite food! He quickly added that he still loved mac-n-cheese. I reassured him that it was OK to have more than one favorite food. 🙂

I bought some sweet, black seedless grapes. I expected them both to love these, but Isaac told me he only likes “cotton candy-green grapes”. Mona tried the black ones and loved them. Isaac only “half-tried” one. Mona eats a much larger variety of fruit than Isaac.

Overall they did try several vegetables. They had to take one bite to try (meaning chew and swallow) IF they wanted the ice cream dessert. They tried: broccoli, peas (frozen tended to work better), french style green beans, lima beans, and mixed vegetables with carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. When I made the mixed veggies, they got to choose which of the three they wanted for their bite. Each chose carrot. 🙂 I was so proud of both of them for trying vegetables. A few were “not bad” or “OK”. They even started asking what vegetable we were having that night. One night for dinner we had mac-n-cheese, some meat, and a little bit of applesauce. There was NOTHING green! They were pretty excited. Ice cream was easy to earn that night!

All in all, both Mona and Isaac did well with Nana and Papa’s rules to earn dessert. We would remind them that we didn’t want to hear crying or yelling that they didn’t want something that was provided. It didn’t always work, but they came around rather quickly when we ignored the tantrum. (I’ve had lots of practice at ignoring temper tantrums when Abby was little. LOL) Overall, I am very proud of them. They each earned dessert most nights! They also would thank me for making the meal for them.

NEW GAMES!
I love playing games and wanted to start introducing various ones to Isaac and Mona. Games are great for family time together. The last few days we broke out a set of 3 different Paw Patrol card games. “Tug of War” is basically the same as the conventional game of “War” except they are “Paw Patrol” number cards from 1-9. This is a simple game, but is great for building patience, good sportsmanship, and fully understanding number values. Plus you don’t have to “hold” any cards in your hand! Mona liked it when she was winning, but when she began losing, she started crying. She did better when she saw how quickly the “winning” can change. Patience. 🙂

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The second deck was “Go Pup”, which is based on the familiar card game of “Go Fish”. Isaac really enjoyed this game.

The third deck was “Old Bone”, which is based on the classic “Old Maid” card game. Isaac and Mona got to try this game when Kelly and Bob came over to visit with the kids as Barry and I loaded things into the motorhome the last evening.

I really look forward to having these card games to play when are together in the motorhome. Then before you know it, we will be playing cribbage together!

We were extremely blessed having both Isaac and Mona with us for two full weeks! Will we do it again? ABSOLUTELY! Although we would likely time it differently so that we weren’t having to get the motorhome ready for serious travel, and prepping the house to be left empty for the hot Yuma summer months.

We originally planned to drive the kids back to California via our motorhome since we were leaving Yuma to travel for 5 months, but discovered that it is illegal in CA to put a car seat in a side-facing position, which is where our two extra passenger shoulder strap seatbelts are located with our loveseat. Well, crap! We were looking forward this unique travel experience for them. Plus, it would also be a lot more convenient for potty breaks. Unfortunately, we went with Plan B. I drove them back via the Jeep while Barry drove the motorhome. Yes, we probably could have put the carseats in the motorhome as originally planned, but we didn’t want to take the chance. If we were in a freak accident and anything happened to either of the kids, we’d never be able to live with that.