Three-year-old’s life a blur of activity
After a week of challenges, I headed to Johnstown to see two-thirds of my grandkids. It was, as usual, a great break from the news, work and all the serious things we face in life. Okay, I did wake up with a swollen eye on Saturday and no deep understanding as to what might have contributed to that swelling. My condo had just been cleaned, so I didn’t think it was from spiders, and I know it wasn’t from a bar fight. It may have been some type of food allergy or maybe that one psychotic moth that lives with me. You know, the one I can never catch. That moth that for four years has feasted on only one of my Merino wool sweaters each year.
Anyway, when I got to the grandkids, they were in the swimming pool sucking up every last drop of sun they could before the school year kicks in, and the little guy was playing with an entire brigade of emergency equipment.
He had ambulances, fire trucks, paramedic vehicles, a hook and ladder truck and a make-believe road with stop signs, hazard cones and crosswalk blocks.
It’s pretty clear that his brother, sisters and poppa have had a negative impact on his vocabulary, his attitude and his ability to get into trouble, but for whatever reason, he was fairly well-behaved this weekend. He came with his three siblings when we went school supply shopping, and all he asked for was a $20 roll of bubble wrap that he begged me to wrap him in.
I talked him down to a $4 roll, a pencil and a to-do list of paper to write on when he got home.
That night he got into a little trouble when he tried to change the family’s Amazon Alexa’s name to “Butt,” and there was that thing he did with the kitten. It seems he decided, while taking his shower, to bring the kitten in with him. Before anyone figured out why there was so much cat noise, he had shampooed the cat. And before his sister could save her, he had covered the cat in conditioner, which, according to his sister Nina, made that little kitty smell so very good.
Later that day, he came to the annual neighborhood block party where he ran hundreds of miles with the other little kids. They played some kind of football, tag and other kid games like “run around the house until you’re exhausted.”
Then, because the youngest participant had a birthday, there was a pi帽ata party. It was Pete’s first pi帽ata ever. The little kids were lined up based on age, and he was the first to hit it because the two-year-old birthday boy wanted no part of this violent, anti-dental, pro-plastic surgeon activity. He took one look at the baseball bat, the hideous pi帽ata being hanged by the head, and ran to his grandmother terrorized.
Seriously, the pi帽ata was a cute little character, the minion from “Despicable Me” named Kevin. Each kid had three hits until finally Kevin’s limbs started to fly through the air. First his left and then his right leg. It was about 35 hits later when the yard filled with candy and Pete lost it. He was in kid heaven.
He also had his first “five and under” soccer match the following day, and it was a wonderful experience for everyone but him. At three, his ability to concentrate on anything beyond a minute or two wanes quickly as he runs from the ball to a butterfly, to a flower and back to the soccer ball.
He ran up and down the field a few times, ran over to his mother and said, “I don’t like this, mom. Get me out of here.”
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve used that combination of words!
Where are you, mom?
Nick Jacobs of Pittsburgh is a Principal with SunStone Management Resources and author of the blog healinghospitals.com.