Grounded

Bella has been grounded from screen time and desserts for a week after some misbehavior. She will miss watching the Olympic gymnastics, which she was particularly looking forward to. We don’t usually resort to screen time on Baba Days, so her punishment didn’t affect our time together much, but she was a bit subdued. She’s annoyed with herself for misbehaving and with her parents for punishing her, so my dramatic reading of some Frog and Toad stories was particularly successful, and after applying some temporary tattoos to both our arms, we set out for the playground to work off a little energy. I couldn’t help noticing, when I loaded today’s photographs onto the computer, that the shadows on the playground looked a little like jail bars.

Bella and I spent some time today child-proofing my apartment and selecting some of her old toys from my toy-box for Evan to play with tomorrow, as I’ll be keeping both of them for seven hours. Their dad is out of town, and their mom has taken a job that will last for three weeks and does not allow her to keep Evan with her while she works. I am only minding the two children for one day, but I’m a little nervous, as Evan usually screams in fury if his mom is away for more than an hour. Bella promises to help me distract him. Wish us luck.