Monday 24 February 2014

Well it was fun but....

having very small children around is exhausting. The Senior Cat prowled off to bed rather early last night. He did not get his usual post-prandial nap in on either Saturday or Sunday. He played games with his great-grandchildren instead.
The eldest great-grandchild talks non-stop. She has imagination in lorry-loads. She is demanding of adult attention - that they do as she wants in the game she has invented.  I think the Senior Cat was allowed to be exhausted after flying into outer-space with assorted animals. We had to hear her version of "The Gingerbread Man" several times after she had been given the jigsaw puzzle of a gingerbread man made by the Senior Cat. (It is rather difficult to do.)
They went "swimming" in the pool at the beachside resort they stayed at for the weekend. (A rather wonderful, cheap but very clean complex that actually caters for children.)
The younger one got rather cold in the breeze and demanded "out, out". He was passed over to me and, once wrapped in an over-size towel, cuddled in to me - and did not want to let go! I felt honoured but...
I would not want the responsibility for bringing up small children now. My brother, whose grandchildren they are, agrees. I think you reach a point where it is wrong to try and bring up small children on a full time basis. It is not just the energy which is required - and you need a constant flow of that - it is the distance between you. Their world is so different from ours.
I can imagine their world, of course I can - but they cannot imagine ours. There is nearly ninety years between the Senior Cat and the youngest great-grandchild. There will be more than ninety years between him and the one expected in June. That's a lifetime away. I know, at one level, what life was like for the Senior Cat when he was young. I know that he grew up in a world where most people did not have a phone - although his family did because of his father's business. The Senior Cat was in high school before he made his first, unsupervised phone call. The almost-four year old can already make a phone call - although only to her grandparents. 
Yesterday the younger great-grandchild here, not yet two, was playing a game on his father's phone. It was a simple game - designed to teach a child to count - but it was still a game on an electronic gadget that had not even been thought of when the Senior Cat was that age. Little One knows how to play it - and the Senior Cat does not.
But some things still have not changed. We sat on the floor and Little One cuddled into me again because he was feeling scratchy (he has allergy-induced eczema). And we played "this little pig goes to market..."
The Senior Cat played that too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sharing a game which we played as very small children, which we played with our children, is important ... I hope 'This little piggy' will always be played ... something to do when the batteries are flat so little people can still learn to count!

Anonymous said...

Yes, the small matter of batteries... Bob C-S