Our littlest grandson gravitated to every round shape he found around the house last weekend.
First, he discovered the stone covered globe in the sturdy gyroscope type holder. He grinned and spun that sphere round and round.
Grandpa handed him the school sized globe from the desk. He looked at it, grabbed the arch holding the cardboard sphere of blue, greens and pastels and dragged it over to show his mother.
“Isn’t that nice of your grandpa to share his globe with you?” she gushed.
Of course, we shared it. That’s ‘why’ I bought it at a yard sale. I get a little carried away with neat looking stuff at garage sales and buy items for which I have no use except to share them with grandchildren – so I buy them.
Case in point – a wooden box with three round holes for its red, blue and green wooden balls and slots for a small mallet. It looked interesting. I bought it and added it to the toys in the hall closet.
Occasionally an older child took it out, placed the balls over the holes and whacked them with the hammer once or twice before tossing it aside, but, not our 15 month-old grandson. He found the light colored wooden box and its three colorful balls. He sat for the next hour arranging the balls over the holes and poking them through with his hands – especially the green ball. Over and over he settled the green sphere in place and tapped it with his hand. It thunked to the sliding tray beneath, slid out to him and he started in again.
I watched him for several minutes.
“It also has a hammer somewhere,” I told my daughter who sat nearest the toys.
She scrounged in the cupboard, found the wooden mallet, showed him how to use it and then handed it to him. He held it sideways and whacked at the balls. The red ball dropped, followed quickly by the blue ball.
She re-aligned the hammer in his hands. He pulled out the balls and set them up for another round of hitting. She tried to help, he ignored her and focused just like his grandpa does when he is building something.
Studying the child’s intense gaze as he lined up hammer with balls, I could not help noting, “I think he even has his tongue in his teeth.”
The lad busily hammered away.
“Hey, Dad, come and see the newest carpenter,” our daughter called.
Grandpa came wandering back.
Without acknowledging his grandpa, the child picked up speed, intensity and accuracy. He hit each ball head on, holding the hammer in the right direction. Focusing fiercely, he ferociously hammered a grand finale all over the wooden top, slamming the hammer head down repeatedly on the wooden frame.
Then we adjourned to the living room where he returned to spinning the globe in the corner.
His grandfather topped off the day’s ‘ballicious’ adventure with a bouncey ball almost as tall as the toddler – a ball so large the child could not reach his arms around it. He tried and grinned when he realized he could, however, roll it across the room to show his mother.
It made a grand ending to the visit with a little guy with whom we had had a ball.
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Jan. 31, the Hershbergers added another granddaughter: Sophia Belle, 8 pounds 8 ounces and 21 and a half inches in length, daughter of our youngest son, Nathaniel and his wife Joy, who live in St. Louis, Mo.