Jiichan's Outing

A couple of cute things from yesterday...

On the way over to Crest with Venice, I mention that I'd forgotten to bring a book, and Venice asks why - I said that she and Casey get along so well that on our outings that I often don't have to pay any attention, that they play together very well - yeah, she says, we like to play together - I say, yes, you do, and that wasn't always the case - I said that when they were younger they sometimes didn't get along, and parents or grandparents would have to help them play cooperatively - Venice said she didn't remember any of those times, and I said that was ok, it was better left in the past anyway - the point was that now when we go out on Jiichan outings I often just sit there and they play, and I could use a book to read to pass my time, and while I'd thought of it for today I'd forgotten to get a book....as it turned out, before we left Creat, Venice and Casey wanted to play on the school's play structures for a while, so they did for about 30 minutes - could have used a book to read while I waited...! - At least the weather was warm enuff...

At Crest play structures, Venice tells me that yesterday some boy tried to kiss her - I asked her what she did, and did he kiss her - she said no, he didn't....I asked what did he do, and she leaned forward and pursed her lips and said he did this - and what did you do, I asked, and she leaned back and kind of screwed up her face and said, eeeyyewww...! - I didn't get the boy's name - sorry about that - I won't be on any investigative team from SVU very soon...

In the car on our way to Chuck-e-cheese Venice and Casey are talking about how amazing the body is - Casey says he knows where every organ is in the body, so I tell him I have a trick question - where is the "mind" - he says it's in the brain, and Venice concurs - she then adds did you know that when your eyes see something your brain sees it in the back of the brain right here, and she points to the back of her head - I applaud this and respond that that is correct, and good that she knows that - I ask if she knows what that region of the brain is called, and she pauses and hmmmms and says, yes, I do - I forget the name, but it begins with an "o" - I'm impressed...! - yup, I say, it's called the occipital lobe, and she says, yes that's it...! - I'm really impressed, and asked her where she learned that, and she says she learned it reading something somewhere....so, then back to the question I asked of Casey of the location of the mind - he says it's the brain, and Venice agrees....I asked if you opened up the skull and looked at the brain, where would you find the mind - they both didn't know, but thought it was still the brain - I said, no, it was a trick question - that the mind refers more to how the brain works, and not a specific organ or part of the brain - hmmmm, says Casey, oh, says Venice...

At Chuck-e-cheese Venice at times seemed down, sort of sad - I asked her if she was sad or unhappy, and she complained about the games not giving her more tickets - and on 2 separate machines she put her token in and the machine didn't work - I had to get the manager to come over and get the machine to work, or at least give Venice her token back - twice that happened for her, and once on another machine for Casey - and then, at the very end when the kids were putting their tickets into the ticket cruncher to tally up their take, the machine wouldn't print out Casey's receipt for 113 tickets, so again I had to get the manager to come and fix the machine - well, this problem with the machines, plus Venice's perception that she wasn't getting as many tickets from each turn on a given machine was making her sad - it wasn't fair or right that she gets only 2 tickets - I took her aside and told her that this was the nature of these machines, that they sometimes give you lots of tickets, and sometimes they don't, and it is chance and you can't always expect that you'll get a lot of tickets from a given token - she thought that was a bad thing, and didn't give up her feeling bad....there were several instances that Casey got huge long strings of tickets, and this didn't help cheer Venice up - well, as it turned out Venice ended up "earning" 115 tickets while Casey only got 113, which did cheer her up at the end...

On the way back from Chuck-e-cheese Venice announced that she taught school today - Casey was impressed and asked her how it went - she said it went ok....I asked her what she thought about teaching her class, and she said it was really tough - I asked her what made it tough, and she said there were too many kids...! - I asked her what she taught her classmates, and she said I taught them how to make clouds - Hmmm, how did you do that...? - Well, you take a piece of paper, and some cotton, and some glue - you put some glue on the paper, and put pieces of cotton on the glue, and you've got clouds...!

Great...!!!

It was otherwise a quiet tho fun day of playing games at C-e-c...

Jiichan...