Adventures in Child Development

Well my wife and I found out we were going to be grandparents.

Our 17-year-old daughter Ella brought home the little bundle of joy – complete with a carrier and diaper bag – from school.

It’s part of her child development class, and for five days and four nights this week, our daughter has been caring for the very complex robotic doll she named “Violet.”

This thing apparently costs the school about $800, and I believe it.

It looks pretty life-like, but the real impressive part of Violet is what’s inside.

There’s a computer system that has the baby cry for various reasons at various times during the day and then our daughter has to care for Violet in various ways – from “feeding” the baby with a bottle, “burping” it, changing the diaper, or just merely holding her for comfort.

All of the baby’s action and our daughter’s responses are recorded somewhere within Violet’s computer system and then the Child Development teacher can go back and review how the student did in caring for the baby.

All the students have to do this at some point during the school year and I’ve got to say it’s quite a lesson in responsibility and parenthood.

Violet has woken our daughter up several times in the middle of the night, and has cried out in a number of her classes.

And unlike a normal grandchild, our daughter can’t pawn off care of the little one on us. Our daughter has a bracelet on (that she can’t get off) that has to be pushed every time the baby needs care.

What my wife and I didn’t expect was how our five-year-old (our youngest) has taken to having a new baby in the house.

Now he’s asking for a real baby sister.

So the Habitat for Humanity fundraising sky-diving adventure is coming up April 17, and it is really amazing the way folks have responded by making donations. It appears I have raised enough for Habitat to not only buy my way up into the plane, but also to get a parachute too.

Thank you on behalf of the new homeowners you are helping by your donations.

And to the person who mailed me the anonymous $100 bill for Habitat, it was received. I don’t know how to thank you, so I am doing so here.

Spring break was a pretty quiet one for the Wick family. It was a little too cold to make the annual float down the Colorado River yet, but plans are in the works for later in the year.

The dewberry vines are blooming and the mud swallows have returned to refurbish their annual nesting areas under our eaves, so spring is here to stay, it seems

I did set up the tent and me and the boys slept out a couple of nights in the yard. Through the screened top of the tent we saw the international space station one night. That’s the first time we’d ever witnessed it, and it was amazing. Kinda like a really bright, slow moving shooting star.

I’m not sure who suggested it, but somehow we got the idea to go over to Brenham one day during spring break to go roller-skating. It’s still as difficult as the last time I rollerskated probably 30 years ago. I remember as a kid a couple of summers they had roller-skating offered at the Fair Pavilion (I still think of it as its former name, The Roundup Hall).

We’re at the tail end of Lent and not a moment too soon. I’m really missing coffee.

I’m down to the final remnants in the jar of Postum, but I refuse to buy another (until next year).

I made my wife a cup of coffee the other day just so I could smell it.

The other day I made a cup of hot tea at work and while it was warming in the microwave I looked at the box and saw the tea had expired in 2016.

I drank it anyway.