Ezra has visited us alone many times, starting well before she was a year old. But, as the second child, June has never been to visit us alone. This summer, Ezra is five and June is three, so I thought this might be a good time to split Grams Camp into two separate sessions. Towards the end of June, Omi had invited Ezra to go to vacation bible school, but June is not quite old enough yet. Katy and I decided that would be a good week to have June come for a solo visit.
Katy and Travis came and brought both girls for my birthday weekend. When they left on Sunday, June stayed for the week. Katy had tried very hard to prepare her for staying alone, but it was clear that she was feeling a little uncomfortable about the rest of the family leaving while she stayed behind.
As part of the preparation, they had watched the episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood that teaches that grown ups come back. The episode is titled Daniel Goes to School. We ended up keeping that handy and watching it a couple of times during the week.
Overall, she did great. The secret was keeping her busy. It was really fun to spend one-on-one time with her. When you get her alone, her personality just shines. She's much quieter when her big sister is not around. I was also impressed with her attention span. For a three year old, she can focus on a project or craft for quite a long time.
We started with a trip to Dollar Tree where we bought some crafting supplies and some paint with water kits. I bought two kits for a total cost of $2. Each kit had several pages similar to the ones you see in these photos. Each kit also came with a set of markers and a couple of printed pictures to use them on. She painted these for a little while almost every day she was here. I definitely got my money's worth with these. I will say, the markers were kind of messy, so I threw them away after the first or second day.
The other thing we got at Dollar Tree was the supplies to make a wreath. For the base we used a straw wreath out of my craft closet and I bought eight packages of pom-poms and four bottles of glue for a total of $10.
I moved the kid's table into the living room and covered it with newspaper which I taped into place. We used plain old white school glue which I poured into a disposable bowl so she could just dip the pom-poms in the glue and stick them onto the wreath. It worked perfectly. She loved creating this project and it kept her busy for several hours. Part of the time I worked with her and part of the time I did other things in the room. I did have to help her fill in the inside of the wreath and I helped her fill in some of the blank spaces she left between the pom-poms. When it was finished I added a ribbon from my craft closet and hung it on the door of the Princesses' room.
We got a lot of mileage out of the pom-poms. There were quite a few left over from the wreath project and she played with them a lot. I have a big can that I normally keep colored pencils in. She emptied the pencils into a plastic basket and used the can to hold her pom-poms.
I have a ceramic teapot and two cups sitting on my coffee table. I've never used them, I just thought they were pretty and bought them from the silent auction at the family reunion last fall. She filled them with pom-poms and played tea party with them off and on all week. So on Wednesday afternoon, when it was raining yet again, I decided we should have a real tea party.
One of my fondest memories is tea parties with my Granny. She would make grape Kool-Aid and let us serve it out of an old aluminum teapot. She always had homemade cookies to serve with it. We would spread a blanket out in the yard and have an afternoon tea party.
I let her choose a tablecloth for her little table and we added a mason jar of flowers so we had a centerpiece. I let her brew the tea using my Keurig coffee maker. I didn't have any cookies, but we had cheese and crackers with fresh strawberries.
Since she was here during the week of my birthday, she went along when Patrick took me out to dinner to celebrate. She also got treated to frozen yogurt one evening after dinner.
In my absolute favorite moment of the week, on one of those rainy afternoons, we were watching a movie when she climbed up on my lap and this happened. Only the two of us were at home, so I picked up my cell phone and snapped this selfie.
There is nothing better than spending a quiet couple of hours cuddling your sleeping grandbaby.
On Thursday evening, we drove to Three Rivers and met Katy and Ezra for dinner. Both of the girls were so excited to see each other and June was particularly happy to be back in her Mommy's arms. She was very clingy all through dinner. I don't know if we'll get her to visit alone again any time soon.
She wasn't weepy or upset at all the entire time she was here. The only problem we had all week was getting her to go to bed at night. We finally ended up putting her in her car seat and driving until she fell asleep every night. Some nights it worked quickly and some nights we drove for a long time.
Next week, I'll spend the week at their house to take care of them during the day while Katy works. Travis is going on a canoeing trip. The week after that, Ezra will spend the week with us for her week of Grams Camp. She wants to learn to sew, so I'm working on a project that might be simple enough for a five year old to work on. She's very enthusiastic so I want to make sure we capitalize on that and don't frustrate her. I'll be telling you all about it.
