Abe had to work Tuesday, so I had planned to spend the morning at the botanical gardens with the kids. When I googled directions, my phone accidentally pulled up the Miami Botanical Gardens, which were closed on Tuesday, and I didn’t realize they were the wrong gardens (we wanted to go the Fairchild Gardens–which were actually open), so I came up with plan B.
We went to Vizcaya, the mansion John Deering built for himself. I am so glad we did! The kids loved seeing and learning about it (we did the audio tour on my phone), and as a bonus we got to see so many girls doing their quincenera photos on the grounds. Clarissa and Ammon thought they were princesses, and I made zero effort to disabuse them of this assumption. It was too cute to see Clarissa stare at them open-mouthed, and Ammon would call to each one, “You are so, so, So beautiful! You are a beautiful princess!” I also enjoyed watching the girls react to his compliments.
On the way home the older girls and I discussed the morality (or lack thereof) involved in building a mansion like that, and we also discussed the Gilded Age, the pros and cons of American capitalism, and the exploitation of workers under the ultra-rich Gilded Age business owners. I asked the girls to explain whether they thought the system was fair and moral, and both Lydia and Mary made excellent points.
Lydia said that people have played by the rules of their time throughout history, and the rules have sometimes been good and sometimes been bad. Mary pointed out that there is no need for one person to own a home like the one we’d just seen. I said that from clues throughout the house I assumed John Deering might have had narcissistic tendencies. That his bedroom was styled after Napoleon’s uniform was a leading clue–but the house itself was another.
After all of this serious discussion, we decided to spend the rest of the day playing in the Airbnb pool. Mary and Lydia took breaks for math and the little kids took a television break in the middle. I get worried that they are swallowing too much water–especially Clarissa, who often swallows instead of blowing bubbles while swimming. But her swimming is so amazing in spite of that! She can swim the width of the pool without help, and if she got her way she would never have taken a break from the pool at all. She has always been obsessed with water, and seeing her swim brings me so much joy. This summer I resolved that the kids would all learn to swim to the point where I felt very comfortable alone with them in pools, and my dream came true. It felt so good to spend a day enjoying the fruit of everyone’s swim-lesson labor and just have fun together in the water.
I also enjoyed a wonderful float/nap on the inflatable raft while the little kids took their break. It was a magical afternoon.
After we were done swimming, everyone got in their pajamas and we ordered salads from some local salad place and cookies from Milk Bar for dessert. We ate together on the couch while watching National Geographic specials on shark attacks, most of which seemed to happen in Florida. Abe raised some mild objections when some images were gory, but I countered that this was local culture content and had educational value. (Mostly I am interested in deterring Ammon from marching into the ocean behind my back at a beach.)
To this end, the videos were exceptionally useful. Afterward someone jokingly suggested we go to a beach and Ammon actually started crying at the thought. I’m sure purposefully planting fears in one’s children is the definition of bad parenting, but at the same time I have a vested interest in keeping Ammon–who seems programmed for self-destruction–alive. And I found National Geographic shark videos an excellent aid in that endeavor.