A busy week with grandchildren

Barry headed back to New York while I stayed in Sharon and had three fun-filled days with the children, who were on winter vacation from school.

On Tuesday, Dina and I took the four children to see The Lego Movie. I wrote a bit about it the other day but I want to expand on that review. I have to admit that I went into this thinking it would largely be a commercial for Legos, and I suppose it was. But the story is ultimately about the conflict (perhaps too strong a word) between the increasingly popular Lego “kits,” which include specific instructions for building a particular item, and the use of Legos for creative building. I am sure that there are many grandparents like us who have invested small fortunes in Lego kits. Quite a few of these Lego kits are kept in our apartment, and we have bought plastic bins in which to store each set and its instruction manual for future rebuilding. Recently Ella has begun to take some apart and build them again. At home, Joshua has received many kits over the past few years, the pieces for which have all been stored together in one large tub (except for the few hundred that Dina discovered Joshua was “storing” under his bed). He often takes out the tub and builds his own designs. The movie was essentially about the tension between these two approaches to playing with Legos. You might think that the Lego folks would want to come down on the side of the kits, because they surely have developed quite a clever and successful marketing approach. But in fact, the ultimate message as I understood it was that both kinds of play are valuable, and that each child has to find his or her own way.

I am not sure the children quite understood the movie on that level, but they certainly seemed to enjoy it, and they ate enough popcorn and candy to make for a very sweet afternoon.

The highlight of Wednesday was baking hamantaschen, the triangular cookies eaten on the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, with Dina, Joshua, and Ella. We had a great time; so much fun that I completely forgot to take out the camera! Dina had put together the dough and fillings in the morning, and we spend a few hours making about 100 or so cookies. Most of these went into the freezer for the upcoming holiday, but we enjoyed tasting the “bloopers.”

Yesterday Simmie and I took Eliana and Maya to a relatively new place called “Launch.” What will they think of next? Basically, this is an enormous warehouse-type structure that is filled with trampolines of different sorts, and the children run around from one to the next jumping to their hearts content to the beat of incredibly loud disco music. And to top that off there is an arcade with all sorts of electronic games. We bought just one hour of jumping time which was more than sufficient; much longer and I think we would have all gone nuts. But they did have a great time. The lighting is not terrific but I tried to take some pictures which I have attached here. These give a feel for what the place looks like for those of you who have never seen one of these. Then there are a couple of pictures of Maya that will just bring a smile.

Eliana had plans with a friend in the afternoon so Maya came over and spent a few hours with me. We played a number of games, and she beat me at every one. While Barry tends to allow the children to win, I pretty much play to my ability. The children always cream me at matching (32 pairs of cards spread out face down and players take turns lifting two at a time to find pairs) and Maya quickly beat me three straight rounds of Goblet, a game involving nested cups that I do not believe she had ever played. Then we went looking at the other games we have and she wanted to play QBitz. This is a game that involves 16 dice with different two-color patterns on each side that are used to form pictures shown on cards. When I purchased the game a year or so ago, I accidentally bought the more advanced QBitz Extreme, intended for children over 8 years old. While she was not able to put the patterns together as quickly as I can, she not only did a very good job, but she stuck with it and kept wanting to do another round. We must have played at least half a dozen of the patterns.

Simmie and crew are driving down to New York today to spend the weekend with Ronen’s family. We are having dinner with Dina and family this evening, and then tomorrow Joshua and Eliana will join us for lunch while their parents enjoy an afternoon with friends. Then on Sunday we head back to New York.

It has been a good week. I wish I could get around a bit more easily, but I am so fortunate to have such a loving and patient family who, for reasons I cannot fathom, seem to like having me around with them and work hard to make it possible for me to join in the fun. I could not be more touched or proud.

Love,

Rebecca