Grama and the Daycare Kid
For the last ten days we have had our granddaughter staying with us
while her parents were overseas. She is six, going on sixty, with a
vocabulary that a grade eight student could envy and a lot of determination
. Grama is tired, even though she enjoyed every fraught moment. Her
parents are both biologists and so she is in daycare when she is not at
school. She expects structure and adult attention and when she has
them she is a contented child.
It does keep the grandparents running.
She announced when she got here that she was on 'mes vacances' (she goes to a French Language school) and that her mother had said she could watch cartoons in the morning. So, after she knocked on my old grey head so that I would wake up and get her her porridge and juice, she retired to the TV room for a while. Then she got her 'morning activity' (I had a bag with ten easy crafts, one for each day), then she got a second breakfast with Grandpa, then I heard the first of many 'What can I do now Grama?' questions.
Her mother sent her with a pile of videos and computer games and a good thing she did! We had rain every day but one that she was with us. When the weather was good enough, what she wanted to do was catch frogs. We have a big beaver pond on our property and a small 'punt' rowing boat on it. Grandpa took her out in the punt with her minnow net and an old drywall pail with netting on it in which to stash her catch. We had tree frogs brown and green, a leopard frog and a pickerel frog. In spite of their best efforts, the bull frog got away.
She also came with a butterfly net and did a good business in dragonflies. I took her on one frogging expedition to the edge of a big marshy area that borders our property and we spent a long time chasing and finally catching what I think was a very small bullfrog. The wretched thing would swim away underwater, evading our net, as we sloshed through the clinging mud and bushes,mosquitoes humming around us in clouds. After about the third time this happened, Grama was fed up. 'We are NOT giving up,' said Little Stuff. Fortunately the frog was not too bright and kept returning to the same muddy inlet and we were able at last to net it and bring it home in triumph for a few hours on the screen porch being admired. The rule chez Grama is that frogs are let out at supper time.
The rest of the time we spent doing jigsaw puzzles (two 500+ pieces each), crafts, drawings and paintings. I have a glass topped table on a big screened in porch where mess does not matter. While we were working on one project, I must have said something that included swearing because Little Stuff glared at me and said, 'Grama, I do not believe in God!'. Grama closed her mouth with an effort and did not comment; it is the parents' job, after all, to deal with this sort of thing. But she was not through with philosophy for the day. 'I believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny', she said cheerfully. 'Some of the kids don't think there is any Santa Claus but I know there is because he brings me presents, and the Easter Bunny brings me chocolate. I don't believe in the tooth fairy, though. That's Mummy and Daddy.' Gulp! went Grama.
Hey, this is the Canada Moms Blog. What do you lot do when the child comes out with something like this? I am going to pass the issue to her parents but I would be really interested in how other parents deal with empirical logic in six year olds. Meanwhile I am going to retire to my too quiet living room and have a nice, nice nap.
When she has recoverd, you can find Mary G blogging at 'Them's My Sentiments'.
