Susan Writes

My two sweet little Grands who were born during the summer of 2011 are two years old and they are typical toddlers.  They are learning to be independent and they mimic and they ask questions.

Early one morning when everyone except Dan and I was sleeping, he lined up three toy trucks, one behind the other.  He stacked wooden disks, the size of checkers, side-by-side in the bed of the dump truck.  When he pushed the truck across the floor, the disks rolled off.  I gathered the disks in my hand and said, “Look, Dan, lay these flat, on top of each other and they won’t roll.”  My Grand looked at me sternly, “No, Gen*,” he said.  Two more times he stacked the disks side and side and both times they rolled off the truck.  The fourth time, Dan pushed the truck with one hand and held the disks in the truck bed with his other hand.  “See, Gen,” he said.  “I do it!”  He did it his way.

Elaine sat quietly in her mother’s lap as her older brother and sisters, her parents, and I crowded around a laptop computer watching a slideshow of pictures from a recent family vacation.  She sucked her thumb on one hand and twirled her hair with the other hand.  Her eyes blinked often and slowly.  Then a picture of her sister, with eyes like saucers and arms and legs stretched wide as if she were flying, appeared on the screen.  “What on earth?”  Elaine yelled.  (The picture was snapped after Elaine’s father threw her six-year-old sister high in the air and just before her sister splashed into a swimming pool.)  What on earth?  Who says that?

“Agen,” Dan said.  Pat-a-cake again and again.  His chubby little hands pound the imaginary cake, and if he’d really held a cake, he’d flung it onto the ceiling, not thrown it in a pan.  He grabbed my finger.  “Band-aid?” he asked.  I assured him my finger was okay; the band-aid covered a small cut.  “Why” he asked.  And my answer led to another why and another and another.

“Baby Brumblebee.  Sing, Gen,” Elaine said.  I clasped my hands together and sang, “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Won’t my mother be so proud or me?”  Elaine put her hand on my mouth and said, “Stop, Gen!”  She pulled my hands apart.  “Brumblebee gone?” she asked.  I reminded her that it was a pretend bumblebee – not real.  “It sting you?”  she asked.  No, I assured her.  “Okay, sing, Gen!”  I clasped my hands and she clasped hers.  “Ouch, it sting me!”  Elaine shouted and threw her arms wide apart.  “Smash it, Gen!”  “I’m smashing up a baby bumblebee,” I sang.  Elaine sang along, slapping her hands together.  At the end of the song, Elaine asked, “Brumblebee, gone?”  Yes, until next time.

Oh, what fun to play with my two-year-old Grands!  Until he runs and she climbs.  Until they say, “NO!” when it’s time to wash their hands.  Until they have more questions than I have answers.  They are two years old and they’re acting their age.

*Gen—toddler talk for Gran.

Filed under: Grandchildren, Kids Say Funny Things | Tagged: Grandchildren, Two years old |