Be careful lest kids out-smart you
When my nephew recently began to crawl, I was super excited; first of all because it was an important milestone in his life, but also because it meant I didn’t have to carry him around all over the place. Of course from previous experience with his sister, I know that crawling is not as slow in children as it is in adults. In fact, they seem to have borrowed some lightning speed from the cartoon character Flash!
And this is how Ami has been recently. I just can’t seem to catch him that easy. Every time I want to carry him or take him to bed, he thinks it is playtime and starts crawling around real fast. To him, it is a lot of fun and I really don’t mind playing with him every so often. But trust me, after a long day in class and a long ride on the bus on the way home, running after a tiny Flash can be very frustrating.
In regard to that, my new prayer request every morning and night is for strength and patience. In fact, I have decided that the best way to lose weight and keep fit is by chasing Ami around. Just get ready to get tired and have the patience to run around and play with him and next thing you know you will be laughing all the way to the weighing machine!
Then there is my precious Zuri. She is growing into a big girl. She is now two years old and definitely all over the place herself. She is now tall enough to reach most places she could not reach and she has amazing patience and determination to get what she wants. My sister Tracy had magazines and newspapers strewn around on stalls and table tops. Now, it seems the power team of Ami, my little Flash and Zuri, who reminds me of Wonder Woman, have the capacity to destroy or at least ‘modify’ whatever they lay their hands on.
Just the other day, we moved to eating from the dining table to avoid breakages and food being poured. In fact, I think we are protecting ourselves from innocent curiosity than anything else. Children are just a factory of many thoughts and actions pieced together to cause mayhem, only that to them, it is a learning platform of all the cool stuff they saw adults see or do. Back to the dining table, we discovered that the power of the mind is probably strongest out there.
Zuri and Ami came to where we were having breakfast and of course none of them is tall enough to reach the table top yet. Ami is also yet to learn to stand up and move using objects and walls; so we are even safer because we only have to worry over Zuri reaching something. So, we put all the utensils in the centre of the table, which is out of her reach, even on tip toe. I am glad to say that Zuri is one smart cookie! Despite the drama she caused and the near accident, I am very proud of her and I can tell she has one high intellect.
Anyhow, back to the reason of my high praise. As we had tea while talking about school and work and other activities, I noticed that the mat where my brother-in -law has placed his tea was moving and quite fast, and so did everyone else at the table. That was when my brother-in-law made a grab for his cup of tea. We saw the table mat moving off the table followed by a loud thud. Looking down, there was Zuri, fallen square on her derriere, with the table mat in her hand. The look on her face was priceless as she looked at the mat, then at the table and back to the mat. I am sure that in her mind, she was wondering how she landed so hard on the floor and where her prize was. I mean, how could the mat come back empty after it felt so heavy for her when she was pulling and tagging at it?
Of course Tracy went into a fit of hysteria over what could have happened if we had not seen the movement in time and the hot tea that would have landed on her. I was pretty shaken and could not believe what had just happened. Do not get me wrong, I marvelled at her genius and at how Zuri never ceases to amaze me. But I was also scared at what could have happened. So, Zuri got a lecture on how bad what she had done was and I assume she understood because in a few seconds, we had a show of serious waterworks from her. But I think she learnt her lesson.
Speaking of lessons, I believe we all did because now none of us will let a mat hang over the table or allow it to be close to the edge. In fact, we won’t have the tea mugs, full or otherwise, near the table edge ever again till the kids are old enough to understand the dangers. And by then, we will be so used to taking the precautions that you can be sure no one will put anything on the edge of the table again!
But that was not the only lesson of the week. Ami can never be left behind on the mischievous train either. Although I think I will change the name of the train from ‘mischievous train’ to the ‘curiosity wagon’. Well, today on the curiosity wagon, Ami learnt to decorate the house as well as his mouth with paper. He found a stack of magazines and newspapers at his reach and you can imagine the sight of the house after 30 minutes. There was paper strewn everywhere; there was wet pieces of paper on his face and in his mouth as well as pages of what used to be magazines. I was just glad that my class assignments were not laying around the house and neither were Tracy and Isaac’s precious documents from work. The sad news is that Ami had just rid the house of a precious amount of entertainment material.
Well, I guess we learnt that table tops are not as innocent as they seem. I know I should be saying that babies are not as innocent and docile as they seem, but for once, I will lame an inanimate object. I mean, don’t you remember that as a child, the table or the bed or the wall was always the wrong party and never you? I mean, it’s the clothes that shrunk and never you who had grown. It was always the table that hit you and never you who ran into the table.
So, following this example, I am dealing with the situation from the child’s perspective. Had the magazines not been so colorful, Ami would never have reached for them, had the table mat not been so colorful, Zuri would not have reached for it. In fact, had the stool not have been so low to begin with, we would never had moved the objects and aroused the children’s curiosity in the first place. Don’t you just love having a child’s mind? Now I can blame everything around me!
So, today’s lessons are to never underestimate a child, they are the smartest people in the world. And lesson number two and the most important: when all else fails, blame the table tops!
END: BL 42 / 36-37