Princess's Demise

Saturday morning and Dad feels like it is a good excuse to sleep in. Katie is shooed back to bed at 6am...and she has to wait and wait....and wait.

9am and Clare and I decide it is time to have our Coffee and Tea in bed. Katie is ready and willing. She brings up the tea for Mum and the coffee crystal jar for Daddy. (The last two times the instant coffee jar was full it got opened and dumped all over the floor...so we thought we would pre-empt the disaster this morning!)

I got through the world section of the paper and headed down stairs. Benny, Katie and Tim were up and playing Play station in their pyjamas.

Benny and Katie were willing to get dressed to go out for the morning walk, but Tim wanted to stay home with Mum. Katie had her helmet on and her bike at the top of the driveway. Benny, who was torn between staying home and playing video games and going got himself organised and was helmeted and at the top of the drive as well. . . . Tim found the cards and funny money and was busy sweet talking his Mum into a game of Texas HoldEm. (Tim won everyone's money the day before and had decided that that was the game for Him!

While Tim was beating his Mum at poker...Benny and Katie were making their way to the beach. I held onto Katie as she pedalled along. She was wobbling quite a bit as we went, then I remembered a trick from MY dad...I told her to look at Benny off ahead. That took her attention off of the front tyre and she was able to get rid of the ‘wobbles'.

Benny got something in his left eye as we went beneath the pohutukawa trees. There was quite a bit of pollen or seeds or something coming off the trees this morning in the breeze and they made Benny blink and Katie sneeze. Benny found that he could bike and rub his eye at the same time...which meant riding with one hand! He was very impressed with himself...until he almost ran into a fence! He stopped and rubbed the Pohutukawa tree out of his eye...then we went on.

Katie was pedalling along and getting more and more confident. "I feel happy Daddy!" That meant that she was no longer nervous about the bike riding. "I feel very happy!" Which is of course what every Dad wants to hear. That meant on a few levels that Katie had reached a state of 6 year old bliss. She was overcoming one of her fears (bike riding). She was achieving a goal (bike riding) and she was out with her Dad and big brother Benny doing something fun!

She is such an enthusiastic girl I was enjoying the experience all the more for her enjoyment.

We arrived at the boating club entrance to the beach and went right to work. The goal was to teach Katie how to stop on her bike.

The weather was not with us this morning. . . . My plan was to use the down hill access from the boating club car park to build up enough momentum for Katie and Benny to have enough ‘steam' to make some nice skid marks in the sand. The on-shore breeze was so strong that all the momentum was negated by the wind. They came down with a rush and were pushed back to a stop by the wind with out using the brakes at all! Katie was happy to work on her stopping and starting...but Benny was annoyed with the sand blasting experience and we didn't spend much more than 10 minutes at it.

We did spend a little time at the skateboard park though. Katie was helped going around the ramps...and Benny had a few uninhibited rolls down them as well.

Clare had English muffins on the menu when we got back. Tim had thoroughly beaten her at poker, and she was ready to look at breakfast for all.

A quiet Saturday ensued...the kids played their games and Clare and I went about our hobbies. In the afternoon we went out again and took the kids back down to the beach. The wind had died down and the beach access was perfect for the fun we had attempted in the morning.

Benny zzzzipped down the ramp and made a super skid in the sand. 15 Dad steps long! Katie made a 3 Dad step skid and they went back for more and more. Benny's longest was 17 ½ Dad steps long skid! It was beautiful! Katie clocked in with a respectable 5 step skid and I think is well on the way to learn how to stop!

Tim played in the sand near the car and kept his Mum occupied. He does so well in being self sufficient. He had a good running story for himself and his Mum and was busy busy busy as Benny and Katie worked on their world record skid marks.

The night brought sad news for the kids. One of their Guinea Pigs died. (Princess Guinea pig...Katie's pet)

I went out to feed the G. Pigs for the kids as they were all in their pj's when they remembered that the pets needed to be attended to. Princess was expired and had to be disposed of. Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I had to make an executive decision on when to break the news to the kids. I thought we would try to make tomorrow as good as possible by not starting it off with dealing with pet death. . . . So when I came upstairs and found the kids in bed with their mum I broke the news.

{I had a strong certainty about the likelihood of an early demise for at least one of these guinea pigs...so I had talked with the kids ...especially Katie...about how short lived guinea pigs are. Katie was sad but fairly philosophical about it. She was getting good cuddles from her Mum in sympathy. Tim wasn't sure if it was real or not. So much of life is surreal for 5 year olds anyway. We talked about how life is finite for everything... even the people we knew. Everything has to die sometime sooner or later. We talked about people who have passed already and when Uncle Tim was mentioned Tim was very moved. I guess he never realised that my brother Tim had died almost 50 years ago. He knows he is named after Uncle Tim and I suppose it gave him a focus for his grief for the loss of his pet...so he had a good cry in my arms.

Clare and I are very much in agreement in allowing children to be exposed to the reality of life and death, but also in recognising their need to grieve. We didn't try to diminish their feelings in any way, only to explain the realities more clearly...or that is...to reinforce the realities of life and death for all of God's creatures.

The kids were all reassured that the pets were looked after as well as they could be and that nothing they did were the cause of death. (Nobody fed the pets this morning! But there was food and water in the cage this evening when I checked...and Princess seemed to have passed away this afternoon so it wasn't from being cold in the night.

The kids have all gone to sleep... they were up and down looking for snacks and extra hugs earlier...which they got.

Hopefully they remember the good things from today... They learned how to make a tasty ‘taffy' from marshmallows by twisting and twisting the marshmallows into a tuff yummy taffy. Or the video their Mum rented for them... The Justice League. Or that their Mum and Dad took them to the beach. I'm sorry for the loss of their pet. . . even though I knew it was bound to happen. I want them to enjoy life and to participate in life and accept even the finality of life as well. Clare and I also hoped they learn to understand that our souls are eternal, unlike that of their pets, and we will all be together in eternity when our physical time has run its course.