Dear Great-Grandma,
How are you doing? I am doing well. I have had a good week and so have Mommy and Daddy. I saw Oma (that’s my Mommy’s mommy, in case you forget that’s what I call her) this weekend. She came to visit me and I enjoyed her visit very much. She bought me a balloon! It is big and yellow and has a big smiley face on both sides. It floats way up in the air as high as you let it go. It’s starting to lose its air now but it still floats high. I really like my balloon and I think I will be sad when it loses all its air and doesn’t float any more.
Well, I think I told you that Oma and Mommy were going to freeze corn on Saturday, and they did. Mommy says you used to freeze corn and you taught your daughter Oma and Oma is teaching Mommy and maybe Mommy will teach me sometime. It is very complicated to do! I will tell you what I remember.
First you have to get the corn. We got ours from a farmer who picked it that morning. We got six dozen ears and gave half a dozen to my friend Ethan and his parents and we ate some so we had five dozen to freeze. Next you take off the husks and the silk. Then you wash them. Then you boil them in hot water for a few minutes. Then you put them in very cold water with ice and let them cool off for a while. Then you take a knife (Careful! Sharp! Ouch!) and you cut the corn off the cobs into a big bowl. Then you put the corn in the bowl into little square containers and put lids on them. Then you label the containers. Last you put them in the freezer. And then you have a lot of good corn to eat!
Great-Grandma, fresh corn is very yummy. I love to eat it up. Mommy and Daddy cut some off of an ear for me and I eat it that way but I can also eat it right off the cob. That way is more fun but messier. We had some for supper tonight again and I was very glad.
Guess what else Mommy has been doing! This weekend after Oma went home Mommy and Daddy and I all went to pick grapes at somebody’s house. He didn’t want them so he said we could come over and take as many as we wanted. So we went and picked bunches and bunches and bunches of grapes! Those are very yummy, too. I eat them skins and seeds and all but not too many because Mommy says they’ll make my tummy hurt if I eat too many.
But we can’t eat all those grapes right now so here is what Mommy has been doing with them. First she made a batch of grape jam. She had to wash some grapes, and peel some of them, and cook them, and strain them, and cook them some more, and add the peels and water and sugar, and then put them in jars and boil the jars. Then when they cooled down we tried some of the jam. Jam is even yummier than grapes!
After Mommy made jam, she made some juice. She washed more grapes and put them in jars and then put some sugar in the jars and poured boiling water on top. Then she boiled those jars too. We haven’t tried the juice yet because it has to sit for a week to let the flavor get right but I am sure it will be yummy too.
After she made that juice she still had a lot of grapes left, so she made some more jam and some more juice and then some more jam again, and then she froze some of the grapes so she can make a grape pie, but she says not right now because she has had about enough grapes for one week! So now the grapes are all used up but we have lots of yummy jam and juice and sometime we’ll have grape pie. I am looking forward to the pie.
Well, that is what Mommy has been doing this week. Shall I tell you some of the things I have been doing? I learned to open my door from the inside, so now when I wake up in the morning or after my nap, I can come right out and start to play. Actually, though, I like to play and read in my room in the morning. It is a nice way to start the day. This morning I even fell back asleep while I was playing! But then I didn’t take a nap, so it all worked out in the end.
I went to story-time at the library again and got new books out. My friend Ethan has started coming to story-time and it is good to see him there. I love to go to his house. I got to go visit him today while Mommy went to see the dentist. Next week I will go again because she has to go back to the dentist to get a chipped tooth fixed. I don’t know how she chipped it. I recognize Ethan’s house when we go there–even if Mommy doesn’t tell me where we are going I know when we pull into his driveway that it is his house.
Another thing I got to do this week was see a big building fall down. It is a building at college that they didn’t want anymore so they asked a man with a big digger to come and knock it over. I went and watched him do it and it was noisy! And big! And the building fell down! The big bucket took bites out of the building and it was very exciting and a little scary, but Mommy told me it was okay so then I wasn’t scared anymore. Now the man with the big digger is loading all of the pieces of the building that fell down into big trucks that take it away. It is taking a while because it was a big building so we go and watch sometimes.
Another thing I did today was to ride in the bike trailer that Mommy pulls behind her bike. We went on a long bike ride and then we went to the playground. It is a big playground that we don’t go to very often–I think I have been there once before. There are all kinds of things there because it is at a school so there are lots of children who use it. When I am bigger I will go to that school and use that playground every day. I love the slides the best, but I also like climbing and going through the tunnels and playing with the steering wheel. Mommy claps when I go down the slide by myself.
I am getting very sleepy because I had a busy day and I didn’t take a nap, so I should go to bed now. I will try to write again soon! I hope next week is as interesting as this one was!
Love,
Isaac