Playdate

We had an early Christmas present yesterday. Our three-year-old grandson came to visit for the day while Mom and Dad went to lunch and a movie. The young man has a passion for making networks with cables he finds in Papa's office and in mine too. His dad and grandfather work with computers a lot when they are here. He thinks this is great family fun, so he takes old coils of Cat 5 cables and a hub box, strings them all together, plugs them together and plugs the hub into the electrical socket. A little green light comes on and he cheers like he has built the empire state building. Mr. M. has had to learn the difference between a phone cable and a computer cable because the end looks the same but there is a slight difference in size. He connects the phone cables to several old princess phones that we have, then he shows us how all of it works together. What a scream. He had cords all over the family room floor yesterday and we just watched and shook our heads. It was so funny. He wants to be a networking expert. Now I have to recoil all of the cables and put them into a box in my office because he will do it all over again next time they visit. Whatever floats his boat is fine with us. What's WiFi?

He likes to clean out the kitchen cabinet of anything that looks interesting. Yesterday, he took out a container with little cups for poaching eggs. The whole thing goes together with a big dutch oven I have and he spent hours playing with it. He went upstairs to get my container of buttons and put them in the five ramekins, then he removed them and replaced them with Scrabble tiles. We are always laughing about how he finds the weird stuff around the house to be great toys. He didn't spend much time on real toys yesterday.

Mr. M. spent a lot of time bringing us books to read to him. He prefers the interactive ones that have popups and little flaps that he can open. He knows the entire story and if you skip a part of something on the page, he insists that you say that the mouse is in the closet, or whatever. He knows the whole story but loves to open the flaps. How many kids have two adults all to himself for an entire day? He is so overjoyed when he gets here. He rips off his shoes, waves goodbye to his mom and dad and races into the family room. He is eager to get to his special day. They look at each other and say, "Who are we, nobody?" We all laugh that he is so excited.

This young man is the master of the movable feast. Yesterday, he ate a banana, two little bowls of cereal, four chicken nuggets, two pieces of pineapple, and four Oreos--all over the house. He takes them in small plastic containers so he can eat while he plays. He has no patience with sitting at a table to eat--that's boring. He knows there is stuff to play with while he chews. It takes too long to eat to sit with idle hands at a table. Nana and Papa are very indulgent. He's not ready for a restaurant. We'll have to try to get him to stay at the table when he gets older.