9/28/97:
I got to babysit Kevin yesterday -- it's been awhile since we could spend a long time together. It just gets to be more and more fun, he's such an amazing child.
Right off, he kept insisting, "I want to do baking." His mom says this can apply to anything where mixing stuff in a bowl is involved, but I was daunted -- tho I'm a thunderingly good cook in other areas, I don't know squat about baking. So mom & dad found me a little recipe for shortbread, and Kevin & I decided that's what we'd do. He was very excited about it, and wanted to start right away. I told him he had to wait until mommy & daddy left, and he asked why, so I said, "Because they will miss you horribly, and be sad, so you have to hug them and say goodbye." So he ran straight for dad, gave him a quick hug and said, "Bye mommy & daddy!" I howled. Is this a well adjusted kid or what? No clinging and shrieking and insecurity, just total confidence that he's loved & they'll be back & he can get on with his business.
As soon as they were on their way, we got down to business. He wanted me to read the recipe to him slowly and thoroughly, so I did, with much editorial comment (great happiness at having an excuse to eat something with real butter, for example <g>). Then I put all the ingredients on the edge of the counter so he could reach them and place them himself on the floor. So we sat in the center of the kitchen floor and started measuring. I brought down all 5 mixing spoons and let him choose the one he wanted. I liked a weird one that was sort of rearview-mirrorish in shape, but he told me that was too "different", so we used an ordinary spoon. The butter had to be "creamed", so I explained this to him and he began. He got bored with that and said, "I want to add the next ingredient." Ingredient! How the heck does a nearly-3-yr-old master words like that?? So we added all the ingredients and counted them and marvelled at the complexity of what we were doing. I turned a blind eye as he snitched little bits of the dough as we squished it into the shortbread pan. Then he tried to get the bits out of the bowl, so I introduced him to the "kiddy cheater" (bowl scraper) and explained its misuse to reduce goodies left in the bowl for children, and how we could correct this social ill by using it to IMPROVE the gleanings for children.
When they were done, it was a bit of a dilemma -- mom has worked hard to build a healthy lifestyle for Kevin, and, having the same goal, I support her by breaking health rules in tiny ways or not at all. My fulsome love of shortbread came to our aid -- with me in the house, Kevin's portions were very small. He suspected this was a scam, and squinted accusingly at me. I explained that there was a gestalt to cookies. Look how big he is, then look how big I am in comparison, and the cookies have to look like us to be truly grokked, and so I broke them to relative sizes so that they looked like me and Kevin. He grumbled a bit, but accepted it, since he knew, and he knew I knew, that he wasn't legally due many sugar treats anyway.
Eventually so-called-naptime rolled around. Mom has this neat thing unknown when I raised a baby, a monitor where you can hear everything going on during "naptime". Well, this child didn't waste a single minute of naptime sleeping. He expended more energy during his nap than I do in days of awake-time. He sang the alphabet song all the way thru several times, had elaborate conversations with imaginary people, and played rousing songs on his tape machine. He notified me when he was thru "sleeping."
Then, what is always the low point of babysitting episodes -- dropping a load for Grantee Lehua. I swear he saves up for me, just to enjoy the drama. Again, talk about well-adjusted -- I'm so retentive I can't even get a massage because I can't stand to be oily. Kevin dearly loves histrionics, so the game is that I howl my dismay: "Accck! You're disgusting! How could you DO THIS to me!?!" He laughs his head off. The more dramatic I am, the more he loves it and the harder he laughs. He sees my retentiveness as MY problem, and a very comical one at that.
We watch all 3 of his Wallace & Gromit tapes (wonderful!) and I told him of my Walter-Mitty desire to be an inventor. He seemed to not understand why I hadn't just done it. Achievements seem very within reach to Kevin, and I'm sure that will be borne out over time. Then we read a book about a baby, and he said, "Babies 5 months of age don't talk." Then we went downstairs and he played piano for awhile, and was quite surprised that I didn't know how. Amazing child.
For dinner, we jointly decided to do a picnic. As we prepared to take blankee and dinner out into the yard, Kevin stopped me and said, "We should turn off the TV." And so we did. We were having a nice time until an overly friendly labrador retriever intimidated him a bit. I'm relieved whenever I see signs of normal kid-ness in him. Anyway, we finished our dinner in the house.
Now it's time to wear him out for bedtime. This is a challenge, since he can outrun me at a rate of 200 to 1. So I pulled out an old trick from raising my own son (also used it on my malamute): I encouraged him to race around grabbing up stuff, then spin like a dervish, and fling all wildly around, falling down in the process. Each time, I shout admiring things like "wow" and "yay" in a vigorous, energetic, athletic tone of voice. It was very jolly, but didn't tire him out a bit. Then we decided to put the toys away so mommy would be proud of us. The big fun for him was to take any filled up basket and upend it with great clatter and uproar. Well, if you can't beat them you join them, so we got plenty silly. On the off chance mommy ended up proud of us, I'm sure I can't tell you why <g>.
This was a 7-1/2 hour stint together, and not one single time was he willful, cranky, or naughty. I find this amazing. This has been true of all my other occasions with him, including very long ones. I tell him often how much I appreciate his good nature. With his terrifying mind, I know that he will be praised constantly for his intelligence, which is not in fact an accomplishment. So I try to balance this by letting him know that good character, kindness, friendliness, sharing, are REAL accomplishments, and he has much that is real to be proud of.
Twice he said he loves me. This is new. He's not a demonstrative child physically, tho demonstrative in acts and behaviour. And now the words, and of course my heart turned to mush. I could only say, "I love you too, Kevin."
Love & hugs,
Grantee Lehua
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