It is amazing, the way small children see the world. And the way they express what they see. My son can take me from upset to wonder in a matter of a few words. We sit and have lunch and he decides that he wants to put anything that can fit into his cup with tea. He puts pasta, fish, carrot. And after finding a little plastic toy, looking at me with a smile while putting it in his mug, I ask him why he wants puts his toy in the mug. Because it is pretty, he tells me and I suddenly find it very difficult to be upset about it.
When my little boy gets tired, he has a newfound fondness of crawling under the play-mat and lie there, or to squeeze himself under the mattress in the bed instead of lying under the blanket. With his physical strength, and my fear of hurting my newly operated on eye, I have given up on trying to get him out of there and has resigned to wait him out, trying to do something that seems more interesting to him than to hide and tease his dad. When I fail to lure him out and ask him why he wants to be under the mattress instead of under the soft blanket, he says because it is cozy.
My son is quick and loves to do things his own way, which not seldom is the opposite of what his dad wants him to do. It is as it is supposed to be I guess, but nonetheless sometimes a little infuriating for a dad who wants to have a bit of tidy order at home. So my son is drawing in his drawing pad while I am doing the dishes. We are listening to his favorite music, Thomas the Tank Engine soundtrack, and I focus a little bit too much on the dishes. When I look up, my son has moved on from the paper and has given a wooden chair a green paint job, and he is now working on the floor He explains to me that there is green and yellow. With as calm a voice as I possibly can muster I ask him:
Is it ok to draw on the floor?
Yes, he says.
No, I say.
Very nice, he suddenly says to me in English.
Then we both start to laugh.
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