Grandchildren are worth it.

Our grandchildren are a blast.  The three of them are millennial children while I was born in the last century and my own children used to think I came out of the ark.  Older than dirt I believe is the description.
Well, my grandchildren like to play a game called ChickChick.  It has a few simple rules - number one rule is that they run through the kitchen to the dining room to the living room to the entry way and through the hall back to the kitchen and grandma chases them.  Number two rule is that you don't change direction of the running, but grandma gets tired and turns to meet the scattering children and that usually ends up in wild screams as they change direction to avoid being caught.   Their complaints about grandma changing direction fall on deaf ears but the gales of laughter if one of them gets caught by grandma is more than a pleasant pay off.
During my last visit here, a particularly boisterous session of ChickChick ended with grandma sitting down to rest.  Cries of Play more! Grandma, Play more! urged that the game continue but I told them that I was tired and needed to rest.  Oliver asked, "Why do you want to rest?"  I replied "I am tired because I am at least 60 years older than you" and  his rejoinder was ,"Well, how did you get to be so old?"  I wish I could be around when he gets grandchildren and they may want to play ChickChick.

Another game they like to play is the Growling Game.  Oliver pretends to be a Lion or a Bear or something that growls loudly - loud enough to waken the dead would be a good description.  He usually approaches me with his teeth bared and growling loudly.   I growl back and then he pretends to be a bear with his paws up in attack position.  This leaves his tummy vulnerable and so it gets tickled and so ends the bear attack in gales of laughter.  The growling promptly begins again and his sister gets into the act and two against one leads to loud growling and vulnerable tummies and lots of laughter.  Don't know what the decibels are, but I am glad that we are inside the house.  I suppose if it took place outside, then the department of Animal Control could possibly be summoned.  How do you explain the growling game to someone from the government department.?  They don't get paid to understand...............they just follow the rules.

During my visit in April, a bantam rooster escaped from a neighbor's yard and visited our back yard on a daily basis.  Lyla called it "Chicken Bock" and so each morning we looked for Chicken Bock to come into the yard and peck at the seeds that had fallen from the neighbors tree.  He kept us busy and was a great diversion if things got unhappy for Lyla.
One day, we returned home from the store to see a man in uniform emerge from the back yard and he was carrying a large butterfly net contraption.  He said he was trying to catch the rooster.  Well, rooster can fly over the fence and this man was not exactly pole vault material and so I can readily imagine he had a hard time trying to catch this errant bird.

Oliver attends a speech therapist once a week and he came home recently with a matching game that had pictures of words beginning with S.  Lyla sat on my lap and Oliver, Lyla and myself played the matching game.  Oliver tried to see the pictures through the paper and Lyla sometimes lifted a corner of the paper to see if she had a match.  Sometimes Oliver blew the papers across the table top when he failed to get a match.  I was surprised at the level of concentration they exhibited and the accuracy of their choices. 

During our December visit in 2010, the boys asked me to play the Wii game with them.  They had a Super Mario game on the TV and handed me a controller.  I do not understand how to play Wii and asked them to teach me.  Oliver explained that all I had to do was press the button on the controller.  Well, I pressed the button and nothing happened.  He urged me to press the button to make the little figure walk or jump or something and so I pressed the button again.  Nothing happened.  Out of frustration he said, "Grandma, you should press the button" so I picked a button on the controller and promptly turned the whole game off.  He turned to me and in his four year old manner of speaking said ,"Well, you don't know anything!" and took the controller from me.

These children are electronically adept, computer savvy and know which button to push to get something to happen.  I really think I am from another planet or something.