“Why do you always have to be so serious,” my grandson sighed. I quietly laughed and continued to move him along to go inside and wash up. I know he expresses his four-year-old opinion freely. On Facebook, his mom quoted him as saying: “Quesadillas are not part of a healthy planet.” and “Things without sugar are not fun.”
No, it is not all fun and games, but we had come to his home to supervise him and his siblings for a couple of days – and have some fun. His mom had several ideas of things we could do with the children.
We didn’t do any of them.
Instead we found a festival with free kid activities in a neighborhood with several yard sales. Each child generously told us what we needed to buy at a yard sale, then promptly forgot their find when I played the toy trumpet I bought for a quarter.
“I wanna try.”
“Let me blow.”
“It’s my turn.”
Well, the two-year-old would have said that if he could have. Instead he just reached and grunted his desire to touch and play. Of course, between them the children broke a finger button before we left. I did not mind. They had had their quarter’s worth of fun and it would still play enough to annoy their parents into permanently hiding it.
At the festival, I escorted “fun loving” grandson. He gravitated to the pirate ship – a portable play area shaped like a ship. On board, adults wearing eye patches, scarves and dark clothes loaned children plastic swords, hand hooks and eye patches. Our little pirate instigated sword fights with kids bigger, smaller and the same size as himself. He very reluctantly left the ship to sit on a bale of hay and watch a guitarist sing silly songs. He and his big sister helped with one of the songs. All three joined everyone in the finale of drum sticks beating on five-gallon buckets.
We tried to scoot them along to the car, but the oldest gravitated to the craft tent followed by her brothers who grabbed paint brushes to paint a wooden snake or smear the table with paint – that is about all a two-year-old can do, after all. Big sister, 7, filled a tiny bottle with colored sand and rapidly constructed a second craft. We relented and impatiently watched the clock move toward our “must be home” time.
Mom and dad arrived home with plans for a hot dog roast in the back yard. Juicy dogs, fresh veggies and monster marshmallows for s’mores toasted in the fire pit as we sat on the benches made from cinder blocks and beams. Such an idyllic setting. We will skip over daddy scolding the fun lover for putting one more log on the fire, the hot dogs that got too close to the ashes, the flames that blackened the marshmallows and all those sticky fingers. In between we had fun.
Mom pushed daughter in the swing. Grandpa pushed daughter in the swing. Grandma pushed daughter in the swing. The little guys pulled and pedaled their riding toys around, played the toy trumpet and came too close for comfort with the sticks they found in the yard.
I went home to my serious house and watched Facebook for updates.
Their mom did not fail. She sent a picture and video of the trio enjoying their after-supper playtime in the driveway riding scooters and big wheels. The two-year-old’s face breaks into a huge grin as he shouts for joy, straddling the Big Wheel. He scoots down the driveway to the pallets, blocking the drive’s incline into the street.
Mom wrote, “This is their new favorite after-dinner activity: drag racing in the driveway.”
They also like “let’s pretend.” The stick toting preschooler announced, “Mom is a police officer. Me and Henry are fire fighters.” Oblivious to his assigned role, Henry crab-walked his plastic three-wheeler.
As at the craft tent, they paint at home and everything in the home. Regretfully their mom posted a picture of blue paint on the laminate flooring, on the carpet, on the chair, and commented, “Lazy parenting doesn’t pay off. ‘Keep the paint on the paper.’” Which probably means she stepped away for a little bit and the children kept on painting and moving around.
Clean, clutter, wash, play, read, school, the days go by quickly and night time comes with stories to soothe as well as the sounds outside the house. Our seven-year-old granddaughter told her mother, “Usually nature is like a good night song to me.”
I agree. It even soothes this serious old grandma who smiles when the good night song is accompanied by the sound of grandchildren.
(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times. Email her at joanh@everybody.org.)