Keeping G engaged gets more involved every day. More challenges, more plotlines, more parts. It is really fun, actually, as it keeps me relatively more interested as well. watching her tinyMind sort out tinyProblems and take tinyInstructions is incredible.
The other day I needed to do some bike work, and i did not want her to sit alone in front of the TV. So I said “let’s get your tool box” and off she went to fetch her little toy toolkit. Of course it only kept her occupied about as long as it took me to unbolt my derailer from its bent hanger, but it was a few minutes of calm before she grabbed a pen and started writing all over herself. Quick distractions were required in the form of letting her pump up some old tubes with a bike pump, which also worked for a short span, but eventually ended in my entire box of spare tubes and tires being strewn about the garage. And then more writing on self.
Playing with her trains is even more engrossing. There are conversations with passengers, delivery schedules, important traffic control changes that she must enact. If I touch the trains, she howls like a unionized Amtrak ticket-taker worried about having to earn a living in a free market.
Many times now we take toys with us to the park, and at times she is more interested in running through the park with her toys than playing on the equipment. Her soccer ball is an incredible source of wonder – it goes away, it comes back, it goes out in front of her, it bounces, daddy throws it in the air and bounced it off her noggin. And while I think soccer is the stupidest field sport imaginable, it does make sense when you are a little girl and can’t throw and gravity is working against you to use your feet to play with the toys you keep dropping.
All does not always go so smoothly. Sometimes she has a plan in mind and I have no idea whatsoever what she wants, or if its safe. She was rambling on about monkey bars and feet the other day, but seemed ironically satisfied and aggravated when I held her so she could hang upside down from her knees. Sometimes she’ll point her little finger at me and go “NO DADDY NO NO NO” and I go “what the hell did i do?” Things get spilled, and she insists on grabbing cleaning implements and pushing them hither and tharn around the floor so that the mess is equally distributed over a wide area, which if you could simply adjust your sensitivity downward like in Photoshop, makes it all appear clean. Scavenger-hunt-like collections of whatnot must often be gotten as a necessity for the long trek from the front door to the car, leading to great dilemmas in portaging and transport.
Her verbalization has grown in tandem with her schemes. I’m told she is very advanced as a communicator, all I know is that she knows exactly what she wants me to do and has no qualms about telling me. Great plans call for great leaders, and G is certain she is one. Its kind of ego-centric, its kind of dictatorial, i am wondering when i will arrive to pick her up from daycare and find all the children amassed in her service like a would-be Colonel Kurtz.