I’m pretty far from my nieces and nephews in the states, which is pretty tough as they seem to just keep growing!!
However, I get to live very close to my nieces and nephews in Guatemala! Although exhausting, one of my favorite things on this earth is when Tia Katie gets to babysit.
I think it’s because I am ridiculously fond of these Chapin kiddos, but I let life get too busy and don’t come around as much as my heart needs.
So when Stevie and Carissa finally got to go the states for a visit, but could only take two of their kiddos along, I got to watch the rest of the gang for a couple weeks! Which was great! I got to be all in, fully with them, and all the other business of life came second. And listen, these sobrinos truly make life the fuller simply by being there!!
Ok, I used my “mom” voice more than once, sent an unyielding autistic fixation to the play room for a brief moment of quiet, and am kinda over teenaged melodrama– but this time was so filling.
Which brings me to this week.
This week life as “normal” started up again, and started rounds with Carissa our new nurse! “Rounds” isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds!!
Basically, it’s being physically present in each home each week long enough that the problems that folks don’t think of when asked have time to surface.
I can’s say how many times initial conversations that land on “we’re all good here” turn into quite the list of complications once 20 minutes have passed!!
Sometimes there is also a to-do list, and this week was obtaining heights with the Chapin kiddos. It’s kinda my favorite because we now have a ritual on height day!
It started when I just needed 3 kids’ heights… but it just looked like so much fun that the trio of trouble also wanted in on that anthropometric action.
Andres, Samwise, and Gabriel were crowding the sideboard eager for their turns. But it didn’t stop with them!!
Before I knew it, we were checking the height of triceratops and stegosaurus too!!
This has become such a tradition that the boys go running for the Dino’s the moment they see the sideboard!!
Andres was a little confused by the shorter and taller concept and feels in his heart that triceratops at 50cm is still taller than him at 105cm. Andres also is about a foot taller each month, which is quite ridiculous!
Danilo correctly determined that he was taller than the diplodocus, even with’s its impressive neck. And he made it his mission to purge every Dino from the table while getting measured! (his wild smile turned to focused determination when asked to hold still!).
Gabriel basically just kept saying “iron man” to answer every question.
Probably because we watched our fair share of Spiderman the previous two weeks!! Hey, at least he gets the hand motions right now! He used to shoot web from exclusively his middle finger… He’s on the right track now! That one is a massive bunch of attitude wrapped in a small 83cm tall package.
Fellow nurse Carissa and I learned how to spell dilophosaurus. Disappointingly this was not included in our medical education, and has now been properly stored away. He was 52cm, and did not squirt poison in our faces today.
Nice little dilophosaurus.
Christian was feeling the snuggles after his height, and nearly topped out the sideboard!
Stegosaurus was pretty impatient, and came to 45.5cm. Precision is our specialty.
There were also some bouncy balls involved.
There was solid letdown that 1 inch diameter bouncy balls are too short for the slid board. Buuuut then we were back on Dino’s, so the disappointment was short lived.
CP makes heights an exciting adventure and calming down an excited Teresita was a task to be sure! Thankfully, pterodactyl did not show up for height day so Teri was the wildest thing we had to wrestle!
Pterodactyl is pretty unpredictable.
Measuring dinosaurs is so much fun- I think I’ve been collecting this data wrong my whole life before Dino calculations.
All around, a very fun height day!!
I kinda love these littles!
