My little nephews are growing up.
I haven't written about my nephews in a long time. I don't see them very often, especially now that their parents have split up. They spend much of their time in Morgan Hill and Gilroy, closer to where their mother lives.
They are growing up, though I tend to think of them as toddlers still. In fact, they're so grown up that they'll be starting kindergarten in the fall. Pretty exciting, right? Even better is the fact that they'll be going to school here in San Jose, at the local elementary school across the street from my work. With the twins close by, it's highly likely I'll see them more.
But the kids are nervous about starting school. That's understandable. I'm not sure that they've ever been separated from each other from more than an hour or two, and they've spent nearly all their time with their parents or grandparents. Now that the time to start school is rapidly approaching (I think they start next week?) the twins are not too happy about it.
To help them through this fear, Terry took the boys to check out Willow Glen Elementary's campus. We met the kids at the street corner and went in with them. The kids had shiny new handcuffs so all they wanted to do was "arrest" Seanie and me. They chased us all over the playgrounds for to slap the handcuffs on and drag us off to jail. The cuffs were just a touch too small for Seanie, so he was able to slide them off pretty easily, which made the kids so frustrated because they couldn't figure out why the cuffs didn't work. Unfortunately, whenever Liam gets frustrated he has a tendency to physically lash out and he punched Sean once or twice. Arlo isn't as aggressive, but he's trickier and will try to convince adults that what he wants is also what they want. Right now, he's little so his attempts at sneakiness are pretty transparent.
It was fun, though. The kids got a chance to see the slides and the jungle gyms, which got them excited for school. Since the classrooms were all locked up we couldn't show them where they'd spend the majority of their time as kindergartners, but we tried to peek into the windows and guess about what was inside.
When it started to get dark, we walked over to Terry's house for ice cream. With hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to load the kids up with sugar right before bedtime, but as aunts and uncles everywhere gleefully acknowledge, that's the parent's problem. We got to go home and watch TV instead of trying to wrestle two bouncing boys into pajamas. That is a pretty good deal.
They are growing up, though I tend to think of them as toddlers still. In fact, they're so grown up that they'll be starting kindergarten in the fall. Pretty exciting, right? Even better is the fact that they'll be going to school here in San Jose, at the local elementary school across the street from my work. With the twins close by, it's highly likely I'll see them more.
But the kids are nervous about starting school. That's understandable. I'm not sure that they've ever been separated from each other from more than an hour or two, and they've spent nearly all their time with their parents or grandparents. Now that the time to start school is rapidly approaching (I think they start next week?) the twins are not too happy about it.
To help them through this fear, Terry took the boys to check out Willow Glen Elementary's campus. We met the kids at the street corner and went in with them. The kids had shiny new handcuffs so all they wanted to do was "arrest" Seanie and me. They chased us all over the playgrounds for to slap the handcuffs on and drag us off to jail. The cuffs were just a touch too small for Seanie, so he was able to slide them off pretty easily, which made the kids so frustrated because they couldn't figure out why the cuffs didn't work. Unfortunately, whenever Liam gets frustrated he has a tendency to physically lash out and he punched Sean once or twice. Arlo isn't as aggressive, but he's trickier and will try to convince adults that what he wants is also what they want. Right now, he's little so his attempts at sneakiness are pretty transparent.
It was fun, though. The kids got a chance to see the slides and the jungle gyms, which got them excited for school. Since the classrooms were all locked up we couldn't show them where they'd spend the majority of their time as kindergartners, but we tried to peek into the windows and guess about what was inside.
When it started to get dark, we walked over to Terry's house for ice cream. With hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to load the kids up with sugar right before bedtime, but as aunts and uncles everywhere gleefully acknowledge, that's the parent's problem. We got to go home and watch TV instead of trying to wrestle two bouncing boys into pajamas. That is a pretty good deal.