This month began with my first cousin, Vivi, leaving her homeland of Chile to visit us for 6 weeks. When I say “visit us” I mean she is staying with my parents but we are all partaking in the fun of showing her the sites in California. In her first month, she has already managed to see Hollywood, Universal Studios, Santa Barbara, and Solvang, not to mention the lovely towns of Camarillo and Oxnard where the rest of us Guerras live ;-).
The kids have enjoyed having yet another relative come and visit them and shower them with affection. The language barrier makes it a little difficult for them, but thankfully hugs, smiles and kisses are universal. Lilah is actually able to use some of her Spanish with Vivi, and when in doubt she just leans on her daddy to translate for her.
Luke
We put some of our Toys R Us gift certificates to good use this month by purchasing Luke a shiny new bike. He absolutely loves the thing and enjoys zipping around the backyard on his two-wheeler. The next thing will be getting rid of the training wheels but “not yet” he tells me. His physical skills never cease to amaze me and in that respect he is taking after Lilah. In addition to his biking skills, he is now quite a master on his Razorblade scooter, weaving in and out of the orange cones I set up in the backyard with the greatest of ease, and using his brakes effectively to come to a controlled stop.
This month I also saw an example of focus and determination from Luke I don’t think I had ever seen before. We were at Lilah’s “Fun a Rosa” carnival where they had all these games kids could play. For performing certain feats in these games, kids were awarded with these tickets that they could accumulate and redeem for prizes. After Luke had collected about 20 tickets playing a fish the duckies out of a kiddy-pool game, we went over to play the throw the football through the rings game. On his first try, Luke threw all three of his balls through the hoola hoop to collect 15 more tickets. At that point, we decided to go check out the prize boards to see what we could get for 35 tickets. It didn’t take Luke long to decide that he wanted one of those basketball hoops that you can clip on to the top of a bedroom door. The catch was that you needed 100 tickets. When I told Luke he needed 65 more tickets he insisted on playing the football game again. I did the quick math in my head and realized that we would need quite a few more rounds of standing in line before Luke reached the magic mark, but if he was game so was I. In the end, we stood in line about 6 more times — with Luke alternating between making 3 out of 3 or 2 out of 3 throws — so that Luke could reach his goal. What impressed me the most about the whole feat wasn’t necessarily his accuracy with the ball but the patience he showed in achieving his objective. I mean it was about an hour and fifteen minutes of throwing and getting back in line but he did it without complaining and the smile on his face when he got his prize was priceless.
Lilah
Last week, Lilah got to be star of the week in her class. This meant she had to put together a bunch of materials — photos, writings, drawings, etc., — about herself to share with the class. Well, really Cathy had to pull together all those things with some help from Lilah who helped pick the selections. As part of the assignment, the teacher gave her an eagle mascot that she was supposed to take care during the week. In fact, the first sentence in the journal they gave her to write about her experience, specifically stated that she must take good care of the eagle. So last week, Cathy and Lilah are waiting in line to check out of Costco. In the middle of paying, Lilah motions to Cathy and says eagle. Cathy doesn’t quite get what she’s saying so she asks her to repeat what she said. Lilah repeats “eagle” and points repeatedly at the pneumatic tube which they use to transport money from the registers to the vault. It finally dawns on Cathy that Lilah has somehow managed to put her eagle in the tube and that the tube has sucked the poor eagle up and out of sight. Moments later, Lilah is crying. The cashier tries to dislodge the eagle from the tube by sending one of the money canisters up the tube in the hope the canister will push the eagle out and into the vault so it can be retrieved by Costco personnel. That fails and the cashier tries again. That fails too, which leads to Lliah having one of those tearful meltdowns and insisting that she must get the eagle back because it belongs to her teacher.
Fortunately, Mrs. Riley, her teacher is very forgiving about the accident and loans Lilah another eagle which Lilah does manage to take care of and return before to class unscathed. What an ordeal though. Costco was supposed to call us when the eagle was retrieved but they never did so Cathy took the initiative and called instead only to be told that there had supposedly been some damage done to the tube and that we would have to pay damages. The lady on the phone said a manager would be calling her back. Well, that was more than a week ago and we have not heard a thing so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that no money is owed. And fortunately for eBay, Cathy found a new Eagle for Lilah’s teacher to replace the one that got “sucked up and away.”
The rest of the star of the week festivities went well and even included Lilah getting to bring our dog Joya to school to share with her classmates. Joya’s way of protecting her personal space is to stick her head out and lick anything that comes too close to her. So what do you get when you unleash a bunch of first graders on such a creature? Well, lets just say there were many licked faces that day.
On a sad note, one of Lilah’s classmates lost her older brother in a home accident this month. The boy’s name was Lucas and he was a third grader at Lilah’s school. Apparently, the family is having some construction done on their property and Lucas climbed up 20 feet, somehow lost his bearings and fell. It is such a tragedy as Lucas was only eight years old with a birthday just eleven days away. I really don’t know how a family ever is the same when something like this happens. I only share this story with you all because I know most of you are parents. I also know that as parents our lives are incredibly busy as we try to balance the demands of work, family life, and the myriad social activities on our calendars. But in the middle of that business, never forget about your little ones and always tell them you love them because our time with them, as much as we would like it to be, is not guaranteed.
Until next month…