Conversations With Toddlers

The Husband Dude and I got to watch our granddaughters last weekend while Peach and Dean went out for a much-needed movie and date night.

As cute and cuddly and sweet as babies are, things really don’t get interesting until kids start walking and talking. That’s where we are now. Fish is four and Bug will be three in a month. This is how our evening went.

Food Critic

We had just walked through the door from attending a family birthday celebration where we ate hamburgers, hot dogs, pasta salad, beans, coleslaw, birthday cake and ice cream.

Fish made a beeline for my pantry cabinet. “Can we have a snack?”

“Fish, you JUST ate a big meal!” I told her.

“I’m still hungry!”

Bug piped up, “Me too! Me too!”

“Well,” I asked, “what do you want? We have popcorn.”

“Yeah! Popcorn!” Fish agreed.

Bug shook her head. “No, let’s eat something else.”

“How about apple slices?” I asked.

“Yeah! Apple slices!” Fish cheered.

Bug shook her head again. “No. Let’s eat something else.”

I looked in the pantry. “How about crackers and peanut butter?”

Fish nodded excitedly. “Yeah! Crackers and peanut butter!”

Bug shook her head. “No. Let’s eat something else.”

“Okay, Bug,” I finally said. “There’s not much left. I’m not going to feed you a bunch of junk. You’ve already got a Sprite that I bought you. How about some Honey Nut Cheerios without milk? You can eat it like chips.”

Fish agreed enthusiastically, “Yeah! Cheerios!”

Bug and I stared at each other for a full thirty seconds.

Finally, Bug shrugged and walked away.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I told her, reaching for the Cheerios.

Obsessed With the Dark

After a few snacks and drinks, we settled into the living room to watch TV. Normally we watch Svengoolie on Saturday nights, but we decided toddlers might not see the “cheese” in cheesy horror movies, so we switched it to PBS Kids with some show about two brothers who teach about wild animals.

Bug settled on my lap and announced, “It’s starting to get dark.”

I looked out the window at broad daylight. “Ummm…yes, the sun is starting to go down. Why? Is it your bedtime?”

“No.”

Then, fifteen minutes later. “It’s starting to get dark.”

“Yes, baby,” I said. “It is darker than it was fifteen minutes ago.”

Another fifteen minutes went by, and it was actually starting to get dark.

“It’s really dark now!” Bug announced. “You need to turn that light off,” she said pointing to the big lamp in the corner.

“Well, you better ask Pappy if he’ll turn it off.”

Bug looked over at The Dude. “Pappy, will you turn the light off?”

The Dude got up and turned off the big lamp.

“And that one!” She pointed to the small lamp on the desk.

He turned it off.

“And that one!” She pointed at the lamp on the side table.

The Dude turned it off and we were left with only a decorative floor lamp that put off about as much light as a night light.

The Dude sat back down. “Why do you want it so dark, Bug? Are we going to sleep?” he asked.

“No,” Bug answered. “But it’s really dark in here.”

This Girl Is on Fiy-ah!

Bug announced, “I want to watch Cat Boy!”

“Cat Boy?” I asked.

Fish chimed in. “Yeah! PJ Max!”

I had no idea what these shows were. “You want to watch PJ Max?”

The Dude looked as confused as I felt. “I thought that was a department store.”

“That’s TJ Maxx,” I corrected him.

Fish interrupted. “That’s what I said. PJ Max!”

“Bug says she wants to watch Cat Boy,” I told Fish.

Fish looked at me as though she was terribly disappointed in how uneducated her grandmother was. “Mimi, Cat Boy is on PJ Max. So is Owlette and Gecko.”

“I don’t know if we have that. Is it on Netflix?”

“You have it Mimi!” Bug assured me.

“Well, I’ll have to check, Bug, because I’ve never heard of it.”

She was adamant. “You have it Mimi!”

I picked up my phone. “Let me Google it.”

The Dude looked over at me. “What are you doing?”

“She’s Doodling it, Pappy!” Fish informed him.

“Yeah, I’m Doodling it,” I echoed her. “Okay…here it is…it’s called PJ Masks, not Max.”

Fish got more frustrated. “That’s what I said! PJ MAX!”

“You have it Mimi!” Bug repeated.

“It’s on Netflix,” I told The Dude. He turned on the first episode of PJ Masks.

“I told you, you have it, Mimi!” Bug repeated again.

“THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART!!!”  Fish exclaimed, jumping off the couch.

It was at that moment that a being from another realm suddenly inhabited our oldest grandchild, and she started jumping up and down and dancing and rambling in a run-on sentence:

“And this one is Romeo and this one is Ninja and he’s blue no he’s purple and this one is Cat Boy and there’s three of them no five of them and I can’t stop jumping and I watch this movie every time and Bug says Cat Boy Cat Boy and I don’t like that I’m filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and I’m going to scratch Kova’s butt!”

She stopped jumping and started rubbing the dog’s backside. Kova turned around and licked Fish’s face. Fish grabbed both sides of her head and looked into her eyes.

“You’re so pretty! I can’t handle it!” she exclaimed to the dog, who looked extremely uncertain what she should do.

The Dude and I exchanged confused looks.

The Dude leaned over and whispered, “Don’t give her anymore Sprite.”

Meanwhile, Bug had observed all of this very passively from my lap, as though she was quite used to it and this was nothing unusual.

“I told you, you have it, Mimi!” she said for the hundredth time.

I looked down at her. “Yes, yes you did.”

She looked up at me. “It’s really dark in here!”