Despite what my mother would tell you, I was not ALWAYS a serious child. I remember a time when playing house on the front porch and cooking up "Carrot Stew" (which consisted of any peelings from the stew my mom was making that I could manage to sneak from the trash mixed with ketchup)was the normal. However, it is probably true that I was always a little short on imagination. That being said, now that I have a toddler and am having to "re-grow" my imagination is proving to be an awkward and down right hilarious endeavor. Somewhere between Olivia learning to crawl and talk I gained a sense of humor... which is truly a wonderful thing at my age! I have entered a land where silliness is a must and nothing is too embarrassing if it makes the bee smile or enjoy our day.
This weekend I found my self doing a number of little things that to most people would be hardly worth mentioning... but to me.. they make me smile even now. We stalked the halls of toys r us with no agenda and only my toddler to lead me! I took a moment to look through her eyes, and what fun it was. We wandered down an isle with elmos that sang and danced, babies that walked and cried, dogs that redacted when you pet them and so on. We played with everything that she could reach making quite a ruckus! Every now and then she would hear a tune she recognized and would take off running in the other direction to find it. Sometimes it was those cd collection sample boards... the kind you press a button and it plays a toon. However, these were no ordinary sound boards! Ohhhh no my friends, these were hung at approximately 2 feet from the ground with a large variety of tunes like the "Wheels on the Bus" and "Hokey Pokey", which we sang and danced to in the isles. However, I will admit that I feared I was caught a couple of times!
Next we moved on to large bubble gum pink feather boa's and huge glossy fake pearls. Later, the bikes! Ohhhh the bikes. My lil bee was in heaven and wanted to take a turn on every bike she could reach. Eventually we had to part ways with the child superstore.
I also found myself playing at the park with Olivia, swinging side by side on the "big girl swings", followed my some play time... in what I can only explain as a towering metal jungle gym of sliding fun. Again, I played with Olivia on her level for as long as I could. But I had to draw the line some where, right? Yep. She FINALLY found my boundaries. I found myself about 10 feet in the air with nothing short of a metal screen holding me up. I froze, and for a minute I debated on whether they would have built these for adults. After internalizing this, I did what any other parent (who is secretly afraid of heights) would have done. I grabbed my kid and pulled her to lower ground explained that we better go "puppy hunting". Puppy hunting, you ask? Yes this is what I say to get Olivia to get her to follow my path or to move onto another activity when in a place, such as a park, that we may spot a puppy now and again. For all you parents out there, this is more commonly known as a "bribe".
Lots more fun as the weekend continued, but it is getting late. But before I go, I thought I would share this. Tonight we got into bed and Olivia wanted to chat, as usual. Tonight she wanted to 'wash mamas hair'. It was truly amazing, apparently a sink with running water sprouted right out of the middle of my queen sized bed for which she used to wash my hair (that apparently I could not see). Naturally, this made more sense about 5 minutes into this activity when I finally figured out what she was doing. She kept asking me for ketchup. I continuously asked what the ketchup was for and continued to ask her if she meant shampoo? She proceeded to tell me how she doesn't need shampoo for my hair, only ketchup. I quickly gave up the battle on shampoo vs ketchup, but continued to wonder what might have influenced this thought process. She continually asked me for more ketchup. When I continued to hand it to her she would carefully squeeze it into her hand from what appeared to be imaginary ketchup packets. Funny, I could have SWORN I gave her a bottle... not packets....
Some things never change.
