A Tale of a Stay at Home Grandfather
Babysitting a 2.5 year old for several days really shows your age…
With Sookie (the dog) standing and staring at me for some time I finally decide to get her a treat, peanut butter and snack stuffed red rubber thingy. I ask Margot (2.5 yr old grand daughter) if she’d be interested in helping me create this tasty treat for Sookie. The ensuing screaming lasts for maybe an hour (1-2 min) jabbering out some sort of word salad that it seems only she knows the meaning of. Throwing herself on the floor, stretching out like a kitten in belly rub mode, though not quiet as one, I ask her over and over, “What is it that you want?” I make out the word “blankie” I think. She calms briefly until I inquire, “Do you want me to go get your blankie?” The screaming resumes post haste. Finally she seems to figure out that mere words, as she seems to think they are, will not make her dreams come true with me so she makes the universal “pick me up” gesture and I obey, still inquiring, incorrectly, about the blankie thing which reinvigorates the screaming. Now, at least, that is accompanied with pointing so I assume she wants to help get the peanut butter for Sookie. Another misstep in communication as she screams when I go to open the door concealing the snacks Sookie can only dream of having the ability to point at. With fingers pointed in the opposite direction, and a nearly undecipherable “in there” coming from her quivering lips I open a drawer revealing the little plastic tops that go on those squeezie plastic pouches I’ve often seen her devour. Noooo, she screams pointing slightly to the right. As I open that drawer revealing this time all of the silverware and a spattering of plastic ware in smaller dimensions I decipher a distinct “that one” and as I pick up a blue plastic baby spoon she sputters, “and that one.”
If I’d collected the tears she’d shed to this point I could’ve thrown back a shot by now.
She grabs both spoons with one hand and now she’s pointing, with her empty fingers, toward the cabinets at the opposite end of the kitchen. I move across the floor, babe in arms, opening the doors and there lies the peanut butter that I know is not fit for the dog. I take it out and she now, in very decipherable English, “two spoons” and I fill, mostly, first the red then the blue with peanut butter wondering where she learned that these were Sookie spoons and not Margot spoons. I’m soon made aware that all of this commotion had little, or nothing, to do with Sookie and her little red rubber chewy toy with a pb & snack hidey hole and everything to do with a late afternoon toddler snack of two peanut butters and a delivery dude. Back on the couch she licks the red spoon like a lollipop as I head back to the task that I originally surmised she’d want to give assistance to. By the time I’ve filled the red rubber snack toy of joy for Sookie and set myself into the chair she mutters, “more” without taking her eyes off the pups of Paw Patrol.
You still have some on the red spoon.
Blank stare at Paw Patrol.
I make the journey to the far end of the kitchen to fill the red spoon returning to see the blue spoon still fully loaded.
Interrupted yet again with “more” as I make the journey from her snuggled space on the couch to the far end of the kitchen to fill the spoon yet again with her elixir of the afternoon, peanut butter, alternating between the blue spoon and the red spoon wondering if she’ll ever get her fill. I’ve left the peanut butter open on the counter top at the far end of the kitchen as this may be the only meaningful exercise I get all day.
The nose of Sookie again pokes around my computer screen as I attempt to type out this prose still alternating trips between red, then blue. After some 7-33 trips I finally am asked for more with this time needing to fill two at the same time. Upon returning with the goodies I asker if she wants the blue spoon or the red spoon.
I know that but do you want the red spoon first or the blue spoon?
Ok, here’s the red spoon, I’ll put the blue spoon in the bowl. Later I would be alerted to her helping me out by returning the blue spoon to the kitchen, back to the drawer of its’ origins. Complete with Sookie hair stuck to it.
We seem to be on the same page. For now…
In her own world, on her own street.
