You know how life gets busy (like shoe shopping, above) and you lose touch with friends and relatives (other than watching each other's facebook posts)? Well, April turned out to be a month to reconnect with a lot of people we hadn't seen in awhile.
The boy standing beside Little K is a friend she's had since kindergarten. Little K would attend his therapy sessions and serve as a "peer model," someone his age that he would be with in school, that he could play with more naturally than the adult therapist. This went well for a few years until the divide in their interests and abilities became too great, and Little K was no longer a natural fit.
Here is a photo of the therapist with the kids from about 5 years ago.
We've been family friends all along, but life gets in the way of getting together. Their little girl, now almost six, is an absolute delight, and Little K enjoyed teaching her to tie her shoes during our visit.
We had lunch together, then a long afternoon at a park, letting the kids play on the playground and climb trees, while we mamas caught up in person, instead of through email and facebook.
Another gathering of friends happened when a family that used to live in our neighborhood, but since moved to California, came to town for a visit. The little boy in orange standing below A in the photo above is the one I cared for from age 1 to 3 when his mama went back to work. His mama is between K & A, and between me and A are my outdoorsy neighbors that I adore (they are the ones with the cider press).
Now that they days are longer I have been taking an evening walk nearly every night after dinner. This stormwater retention pond is a mandatory stop to look for frogs. It was fun to have so many kids along for the walk this evening.
Make a wish!
Frogs everywhere!
We completed our evening walk with a visit to a neighbor who is "snake-sitting" a corn snake. We got to watch it slowly eat a (dead) mouse.
We also made time to visit my stepmother, pictured here in her clinic. She is an acupuncturist and practitioner of oriental medicine.
We had lunch, went to the beach to fly kites and play in the sand, hung out in a coffee house with espresso and pastry, and caught up.
My stepmother is 11 years older than I am, but looks younger than I do, because she has such a youthful outlook on life. Of course the girls love her, but more like an aunt than the step-grandmother that she is!
On another day we stopped in to see our neighbor's 95 year old father, who lives in an assisted living facility about 2 hours north of us. Our cat "Sweetie" (seen trying to hide on Aubrietta's lap) is on loan to him, to keep him company. She is a heat seeker and is often on his lap, or curled up next to him in bed. After his cat died last year he missed having a cat, but didn't want to get a new one that might outlive him, or need to be re-homed in a hurry if he went into a nursing home. The perfect solution was to loan him one of our cats, with the promise that we'd take her back any time, briefly or permanently. The arrangement seems to have worked out pretty well.
April was not all sunshine and happiness. One of the two mice that Little K adopted a couple months ago died unexpectedly. Little K doesn't handle death and suffering very well, but I was surprised at how stoic she was. She found a biodegradable box, decorated it, put her mouse inside it, then went to the backyard to dig a grave.
She shed a few tears, but wasn't inconsolable like I feared she'd be. I'm glad to see she is getting a little stronger emotionally.
That is the general update for April 2014. I'll have separate posts for our Spring Break adventures and Easter.
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