Pumpkins and Prizes

I was away most of the day at a board retreat.   We didn’t really retreat anywhere, we just went to the multipurpose room at my son’s school for an overly long meeting.   We talked about lots of things, including strategic directions of the school for the coming years as well as the diversity initiatives for the school.   Exciting stuff—if you find that knd of thing exciting.   It’s a nice group of people on the board and I enjoy working with them.   Some of the day was serious but we managed to laugh a good bit as we did some of the role playing exercises with the consultants brought in to address diversity.

After the retreat we had planned to attend an annual event for visually impaired children and their families called, “Pumpkins and Prizes”.  My daughter likes this event because she sees people she knows there and all the activities are designed with low vision children in mind.   Couple that with the location being at a local gymnastics gym and it was hard to go wrong.

My son came with us and was one of a few sighted children in attendance.   I had to remind him several times that he was moving very quickly through the space and that he needed to be extra aware of the other children because most of them wouldn’t be able to see him.   He took what I told him seriously and was careful. albeit energetic the rest of the time.  The gym was set up with some obstacle courses, a trampoline, a foam pit with a climbing rope and other physical activities which my son was over-qualified and over-skilled to do.  He was told backflips weren’t okay on the trampoline and since they didn’t know his background or training, that made sense.  But he wasn’t bored; he enjoyed all the activities and spent some time playing catch with another low vision child using a rubbery pumpkin.

My daughter saw her VI teacher from last year, who had to leave in the middle of the school year due to health reasons.   We didn’t know what had happened to her and so we were all happy to see her and find out she was doing well.   My daughter was particularly happy to catch up with her, telling her about what she was doing in school now.

It was a bit of a challenge getting the children out of the foam pit when it was time to go.   As a child I loved the foam pit and I can remember the magic it held for me.   As an adult, it’s an entirely different story—it’s hard to move around in and get out of.   Maybe it’s easier to float on top as a child, I don’t know, but I’m glad to stand on the side and watch them have all the fun.

The Big Boy Update:  My son pronounces the word ‘mine’ as ‘my-ng’ with a hard ‘g’.   We’ve told him many times the correct pronunciation, not telling him he has to pronounce it correctly, more letting him know he’s not pronouncing it how it’s spelled.   He informed me the other day that he knew exactly how it was pronounced, but he didn’t like that way and he was going to keep using his version because he liked it better.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were sitting down to our dinner tonight when I overheard my daughter say to her father, “back in the old days, a long time ago, when I was three…"