A Visit from the Little Ones

How little is little?

In this case, little means age two but not yet two and a half, and four, but not yet four and a half.

The girl is older. Parents were not on the scene; this was an overnight with Grandma. Grandpa was out of town, but Grandma is brave.

Two is too young for some children of two to spend the night away from parents but somehow this little boy can do it.

Grandma had had the foresight to stop at the craft store before picking up Alice and Edward Saturday afternoon.

After mud, modelling clay, Silly Putty, and Play-Doh, now comes Kinetic Sand.

It didn’t seem very kinetic to Great-Grandmother, who was immediately deputed to oversee the play with this new squishable substance. It behaved as inertly as its predecessors in the playroom.

Possibly Kinetic Sand is a new name for the wallpaper cleaner of yore; it acted like it in being pink and entirely plastic, in the original meaning of plastic, “capable of being molded or modelled.”

Alice and Edward were set up in business at the dining room table with plates to roll out the K. S. on, using small jars as rolling pins.

Edward was happy pulling small bits off his bigger lump of Kinetic Sand. Soon his plate was covered with tiny lumps of no particular shape.

Alice immediately made up a story to go with the thin, flat disks of the pink squishable things that she made: They were cakes.

She and Great-Grandmother had to eat them, of course. How far back in human history did children and their forebears learn how to pretend-eat? It must have been eons ago, because real-eating would have wiped out the human race early on.

Then Alice ordered Great-Grandmother to make a cake of her own.

This turned out to resemble the conventional cake a bit more closely than Alice’s disks did. One could visualize a bigger version in something edible.

In the background, Edward quietly kept up his minute exploration of the properties of pinchability and squishabability of Kinetic Sand.

Alice looked at the new cake. Clearly she expected something more; a mere cake was somehow not quite filling the bill.

In a flash of insight, Great-Grandmother realized that in the eyes of the young, a cake is not truly a cake until it be with candles bedight. Within moments, it was, three of them.

Then Alice, who knows what she is about, reminded Great-Grandmother that “the song comes next.”

The song came next, with all two singers enthusiastically fulfilling the expectations aroused by the cake.

(Next day in another Kinetic Sand orgy, Alice combined some Kinetic Sand with a piece of cheddar cheese in a unique sandwich, hid it in her backpack and took it home with her. Mother confiscated it.)

Just then, dinner was called.

The days being past of Alice’s alarming aversion to eating anything whatsoever except cheese, she and Edward allowed themselves to be herded to the bathroom for hand-washing.

Of course they claimed they “didn’t need any help.”

Of course Edward needed help but at times like this, some tactful looking the other way smooths out some of the bumps in life with a two-year-old. Well, he got some of the dirt off.

The dinner menu was simple but nutritious. Some of it was popular.

The steamed carrots met with no resistance, perhaps because of their cheerful color.

The steamed kale was too new but Alice was convinced to take a few bites.

The rice was of long-standing acquaintance and caused no comment.

The real star of the occasion was the meatballs.

They were the size of ping-pong balls and utterly undistinguished not only in appearance but in flavor, just the way toddlers like their food.

Edward showed his appreciation by helping himself and clutching the meatballs in his bare hands.

They were a perfect fit. He ate several.

Great-Grandmother thought that maybe he would exert on the meatballs his skills in squishing Kinetic Sand.

Surprisingly, he was civilized enough and liked the meat enough that he ate almost properly, except for pushing whole meatballs into his mouth in one bite. His technique was messy but neither illegal, immoral, nor fattening and Great-Grandmother turned a blind eye.

Both Alice and Edward have almost learned that they do not get down from the table till after prayers of thanks for the meal.

“Almost” means that they do get down and wander off but return without protest when reminded. These are children of a parent who protested with kicking and screaming when being taught the same lesson. Well, that was 20 years ago so we want to forget those days.

Nevertheless, these two have inherited the screaming gene.

It is a wonderful game to open the mouth, tense up the vocal cords, and scream the house down, just for fun.

Which one can outscream the other?

A girl of four can outrun a boy of two.

A girl of four can outdraw a boy of two, and can even print her own name.

A girl of four can out-sing and out-talk a boy of two.

A girl of four can even sing The Alphabet Song.

But a girl of four can do no more than barely keep up with a boy of two when they play the screaming game.

It’s a perfect way to end a happy day.