lil guy trying eir best

Ive been wanting to get a kitchen playset so bad recently... I wish I had enough space for one theyre always so fun to play with

He has a wide range! I think it’s more common for Grace to be floaty-between-headspaces or in an older headspace than being super little. (Is the world ready for my permaregressor Grace headcanon?) He’s used to needing to be independent and he’s incredibly anxious, so I think he does have a hard time feeling very small unless it’s because of stressful triggers. Stratt and Ilyukhina are very good at helping him feel tiny calmly, Rocky’s the best ever at it.

Tiny Grace is usually either “just happy to be here” or “wailing on the floor.” It’s always pretty obvious when he’s somewhere he doesn’t want to be, or doing something he doesn’t like. He puts up with more when he’s feeling a bit older but he still cries super easily regardless of how big he is.

Ohh you know Stratt had a sticker chart for him. And then Rocky also made a sticker chart for him (or something similar) after he offhandedly mentioned it once. He’s very proud of all his stickers. He does wonderfully with positive reinforcement!!

Grace has adopted some of Rocky’s mannerisms and this is especially obvious when he’s little (and vice versa!!). He loves to do the happy wiggles and stomps that Rocky does, jazz hands, whistling certain notes. He can’t make proper chords, but Grace can replicate a lot of one note Eridian words. Pebble-ish language is easy for him to sing since it’s simple. He learned most of these words from parroting Rocky’s pebble babbling.

On the way to Erid and while he lives there, Grace is tiny much more. Especially in recovery he was often very little; it was such a terrifying time for him, but also he knew without doubt that Rocky would keep him safe. Erid sees a lot more of teeny tiny Grace than Earth did. He’s quite happy to be carried around by Adrian while he naps all day lol

Carl is one of little Grace’s favorites to hang out with. He’ll go find Carl to ask if he wants to help with the new experiment he just thought up, “which type of pasta sticks to the wall the best.” He needs help to get the pasta for it and he also needs Carl to boil all the pasta for him once they get it because he’s scared of the stove. And Carl agrees because this is indeed important research! And now the vat is stocked with an incredible variety of pastas for a while

Any combination of Grace, Stratt and Ilyukhina in teen headspace together can be sweetness or trouble. Most of the time they just want to hang out and chill, a lot of parallel play here. They do get into disagreements as often as you’d expect, but they usually get over it fast if someone tells them to knock it off. There’s been some really funny insults thrown by all of them that have stuck around as vat lingo.

Dubois and Shapiro don’t consider themselves caregivers, but they don’t mind watching and hanging out with Grace and Ilyukhina while they’re little. They aren’t super sure how best to handle them, but Yáo’s there to help too. Those are their buddies! They definitely like to indulge Grace in his science interest. Letting him ramble, nodding along as if they don’t already know all this information. Sometimes they have him help out with experiments and he loves it.