3-year-old's Curiosity

Mommy: "You have to hold an adult's hand when you cross the street."
Ellie: "Mommy, what's a dolt?"

Thanksgiving

We’re in DC for our fourth annual Thanksgiving week with my stepdaughter, son-in-law, and (most important) granddaughter, Ellie, now just three years old. And the most thankful thing we have each year is watching Ellie grow from an infant to a toddler to now a little girl with attitude who we can talk with (if not always coherently) and who certainly likes to talk to us (“I don’t have any panties on! Look at my butt!”, a boast we suspect she got from her mother). Yesterday afternoon she came to stay overnight with us at our hotel, going to the park to play on the slide and swings, then to the swimming pool for a foot or two into the water, though more fun playing choo-choo around the edge of the pool, then across the street from the hotel to TGI Friday’s for dinner (and My Giant Sticker Activity Book), and finally back to the hotel to find Ellie’s “hidden bed” (the fold-out couch in our suite) and a couple of hours of jumping and playing on it. Grandpa Mac had to succumb to sleep before Ellie.

I never desired to be a parent for a variety of complex reasons. And I wasn’t a very good stepfather when I was thrust into that role (willingly). And I’ve always had a reputation of not being particularly tolerant of young children in most all public places. So what explains my infatuation with Ellie? From her birth (and we visited her two days after) I’ve been sucked into her being. I care about her to an extent I wouldn’t have imagined any time in the past. Is it because I have a love of her mother (my stepdaughter) that I didn’t realize, transposed to Ellie? Or because a love of my wife (her grandmother), transposed? Or perhaps simply an innate attraction to a very precious child? (As we were leaving the restaurant last night, I overheard a woman remark to someone at her table how cute Ellie was, and when I returned to the hotel this afternoon the maid, just finishing up the room, said she’d seen Ellie this morning and found her adorable.)

Of course, the reason for my love of Ellie doesn’t matter. It’s what it is. And I’m just enjoying it. My whole adult life has revolved around analysis – issue analysis, literary analysis. But in the end there are just some things that can’t be analyzed. Like playing choo-choo around the edge of a swimming pool.

Ellie's Non Sequiturs

Our granddaughter is making progress in her communication, though there are still bumps in the road of comprehension:

Daddy: "I feel like crud."

Ellie: "I feel like strawberries!"

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Daddy: "Ellie, do you want to take the dogs for a walk?"

Ellie: "No, I have to flush the toilet."

Though it’s always possible that I’m the one still having comprehension problems. . . .

Ellie's Countenance

The great majority of the thousands of photos that have captured my two-an-a-half-year-old granddaughter Ellie, most all record her idyllic smile:

Yet I have been more drawn to the few photos that have caught a much more thoughtful countenance:

The smile is wonderfully engaging and can’t help but elicit a reciprocal response (one of the reasons, I’ve recently read, for an infant’s or toddler’s joy), but it is reaction to stimulus, a visceral response. The other look is a much more reflective, inquisitive countenance – a Robert De Niro “You lookin’ at me?” quality that I hope reveals a mind that is already skeptical but curious, wary but willing to see what else is out there, what’s coming next. And I hope that she can carry that – both the smile and the quizzical gaze – well into her future.