Today is my first day actually getting a chance to spend time with my family in two weeks. I can’t believe how this week has flown by – there has just been so much going on. I haven’t had any time to just sit still for a few minutes.
This morning was Liesl and dad’s chance to get to know each other again. Liesl has not seen her grandpa for seven months – which is a very, very long time to a nineteen month old. She does remember him and being at his house seems to make it easier. She warmed up from her shyness in no time and they spent the morning playing and playing.
For lunch we all went over to Geneseo to the Omega Grill. Liesl had the grilled cheese. She loves cheese now and grilled cheese is one of her favourite meals. It is our current “go to” diner food for her. She can pretty much eat an entire sandwich on her own already!
After lunch we ran across the street to Walmart. Dad, Liesl and I stayed in the car and Dominica went in and did some shopping. That ended up taking much longer than we had anticipated. No more letting Dominica shop on her own. We saw Mary going into Walmart just as we were leaving but we did not have enough time to get her attention.
Dad brought out one of my very favourite childhood toys – my Fisher Price Magic Show set. I can’t believe that that thing still exists and works perfectly – a testament to Fisher Price’s quality (and, as Dominica points out, to how well I treated everything that I owned as a child.) I spoke to Jeremy a few days later and he can remember playing with this set as a child too and that means that likely Sara did as well. So Liesl could easily be the fourth generation to be playing with this. I looked it up on eBay and, much to my surprise, there are none for sale currently. I guess this is one seriously unique item.
Liesl had tons of fun playing with the magic set. By far her favourite thing to do was to take the magic wand and make the flower that is in it magically appear. She learned how to do this in minutes and thought that it was great fun. Every time that she would make the flower appear we would all go “Ta da!” and she would get all excited. She could not make the flower disappear on her own so after every time that she make it appear she would say “Need help.” and give it to one of the adults to set it up for her again.
Dad also brought out other childhood favourite toys like my Fisher Price drill and workbench set and my little table top kitchen range set – nothing like the fancy kitchen toy set that Liesl has down in Texas.
I thought that it was pretty cool to see my old toys again. I can’t believe that dad still has them, knew where they were and that they were in such good shape. It is really neat seeing Liesl playing with them and enjoying them just like I did more than thirty years ago. That was a lot of fun. I’m going to try to get lots of pictures of Liesl and these toys. Just seeing these really take me back. I have not thought about these toys in decades. It is amazing how seeing them suddenly takes you back and I can remember being two or three years old and playing with these (older with the magic set.)