The Oven…Again

My daughter and the two next-door neighbor children wanted chocolate today.   I explained there would be no chocolate because it was almost lunch time.   They came back later with an ingenious plan: I would do a treasure hunt for them and at the end of the hunt they would find some chocolate.   Could I do a treasure hunt for them?  Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?

I told them to go ask their mother and if it was okay, we would do a treasure hunt but that there would be only one small chocolate at the end.   So they ran home and asked and got clearance from their mother   Then, to make the treasure a complete surprise, they discussed what chocolate they each wanted and could I put one Hershey’s Kiss and two mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at the treasure location?

I said I would and made up about fifteen treasure step cards, “go look under the bed in the guest room,” “Go look inside the dryer”, “Look where the purple ball usually stays at night”—that kind of thing.  I wanted them to get some exercise so I put them up and down foors.   Which was nice except I had to go up and down the floors hiding the clues.  

I handed the first card to Madison and said she could read them, what with her brother not yet reading and my daughter not able to see the small print.   Madison needed some help with the wording, but I’d put in a little bit of information on some of the cards that only my daughter would know from a location standpoint, which gave her an edge.    But she did get annoyed at them because the other children would run off, faster than she could safely, to get the next card.   She asked them to wait for her, but they were just excited and exuberant.

I told my daughter the next time we did the treasure hunt I was going to create braille cards for the locations.   And she would be the only one who could read the cards.   That will give her an edge for sure.   A small but satisfying thing about learning braille is I can do these things without much more effort than writing out the locations in print.

When I was young I used to love the treasure hunt game.   My mother had a set of cards she’d written up location on and we’d play from time to time.   The same set of cards work many times because the order makes the hunt different each time.   My mother was pretty good with treasures, but I did have only one complaint.  She always seemed to put the treasure in the same place—the oven.

The Big Boy Update:  My son needed new shoes—badly, so after tricking class we went to target and picked out a pair of shoes with laces instead of velcro.   He put on the shoes with his pajamas before bed and I showed him how to tie the shoes.   He got the concept and moves, but he needed time to practice to get it.   I think he’ll have it by the end of the week—or three pair of shoes from now, depending on if he decides to just shove them on and off once he’s gotten them tied a few times.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her first Y-Guides meeting with her father and several other fathers and daughters from our neighborhood tonight.   She was shy but did know two of the children, as well as the tribe leader—my best friend’s husband.   My husband said it was tough for her.   The other girls were running around and playing together.   My daughter wanted to play too, but she couldn’t run with the other children so she asked her dad to.   This sounds a lot like school was at the start of the year.  She was anxious but now has lots of friends.  I hope Y-Guides turns out the same.