Eliza visiting

Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
       Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.