Sometimes Vivi calls me Captain Trisha, and I’m fine with that. “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” is a wonderful Veggie Tales song and hilarious full-length movie which Kevin and I have counted among our favorites for quite some time. I’ve made up a dance to the song that I do with the five and under crowd at school, particularly on rainy days when we can’t go out on the playground. It’s one of the classic Veggie Tales songs on the CD Vivi requests we listen to daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
The three girls have had a blast playing with their new water table, which is a pirate ship complete with a mast. (Hopefully, it won’t confuse them later on that it’s best not to let your boat fill up with water). I’ve decided that the girls are the pirates who get into everything, but who act as if they haven’t done anything. It is amazing all of the things they manage to get into while inside, outside, even upside down. For further details about our pirate-y adventures, check out Treasure Chest Surprises (My Nanny Diary).
Yesterday, when there were a plethora of water toys available, Livie decided to pull the pinwheel out of the planter. I let her carry it around. She even tried to blow on it to get it to spin. As soon as she put the dirty wooden part in her mouth, I took it and showed her how to blow the pinwheel. She took it back and was walking around the deck trying at random to get it to spin around. At one point, Sophie got the pinwheel. She was playing with it for less than 60 seconds before she put the dirt-covered wooden part in her mouth. This occurred after she disassembled the pinwheel and tossed part of it into the garden. I took the pinwheel and the dirt-encrusted stick to the trash only to turn around, and find Sophie sucking on the wooden pin that had been holding the toy together. I thought it was lost forever in the garden, but apparently not. In her defense, it looked a lot like a lollipop made of wood.
I find it amusing that Vivi and the girls are so into Jake and the Never Land Pirates. Her grandma got her purple sweatpants, a pink shirt, a little pouch, a pink bandanna, and brown boots so she can dress up as Izzy. I lost count how many times we read the book The Croc Takes the Cake today.
I can still vividly remember the two children (a 5-year-old girl and her 3-year-old brother) I babysat regularly when I was in high school. The two of them absolutely loved Disney’s animated Peter Pan. They were thrilled dressing up and pretending they were the characters, reading the books, watching the movie, and singing the songs.
When I nannied for “my two little guys,” both of their parents got some books in French for me to read to the boys. I was quite tickled that the two French books the boys requested that I read the most often both involved pirates. In one, a grandmother is kidnapped by pirates, and her grandchildren have to go rescue her. In the other, the main character of the book is the daughter of the most famous pirate in the world; she has to travel with a crew of pirates to different places around the globe on a scavenger hunt that leads her to the best treasure of all.
Both books are actually pretty hilarious, so I was happy to read them over and over and over again. I had to change the words at the end of one book after the first time I shouted them out before realizing exactly what was being said. When we reached the end of Grandmère et Les Pirates which said “Mon dieu, ou est passé le bateau?!” I replaced it with a new beginning of oh là là! followed by the French equivalent of (where’s the ship gone?!).
I was given most of the books in French after taking care of the boys since neither set of parents spoke the language, but they hung onto the favorite ones. I’d like to get those two books again to have as part of the collection I have at home to bring to work and/or school to share with kids.
