Learning and growing

One of our real treats (among many!) since we returned from Istanbul last July has been to spend a lot of time with our granddaughters, including E., who is now two and a bit. When she was a tiny baby a special privilege was being able to hold her and feed her with a bottle, and it is still a treat to have her climb up into your lap with a book to read. However, the biggest treat of all has been watching E. grow and develop over the fourteen months we have been back in Nova Scotia.

Something I have always done with small children, probably going back even to when my youngest brothers were still in diapers, is to play certain nursery rhyme games. These include “This little piggy”, carefully pulling a little on each toe as you say the rhyme, until you get to the tiny weeny baby piggy that goes “wee wee wee all the way home”. E. always kicks off her crocs when she comes into our house, and at some point in every visit she will put her foot in front of me and say “piggies”. I always do it, and she always waits for the little piggy of that foot to run home before she puts her other foot there and says “that one”. So then I do that one.

Usually after piggies have been done, she will put her hand out, palm up, and say “round round”, so I then do “Round and round the garden”, always ending with the underarm tickle. E. maintains a serious composure throughout, and then puts out her other hand and says “that one”, so it gets done too.

These are routine small child activities, like the “horsie ride”, which I have my own version of, ending always with the brave cowgirl from Calgary galloping and galloping until she tips backwards on “all fall down”. There is nothing remarkable really about doing these things with kids, except, of course, for the fun of it. What is truly remarkable, however, and also fun for me is to see how these activities change as E. changes.

“Piggies” has stayed pretty much the same, only tonight I had to do piggies on the little doll that E. has adopted as her own every time she comes to our house. So she watched very seriously while I picked each tiny plastic toe and enunciated the rhyme all the way through. And, of course, she said “that one” and got me to do the second foot. With “Round and round the garden”, the variation now is to have E. do it herself with her little forefinger in my large palm, including the walk up my arm to the “tickle you under there”, as well as having me do “baby round round” in the doll’s tiny plastic hand (and then, of course, the other one).

When E. has wanted a “horsie ride”, she will come up to me and say “Aaaa worsey ride”, and when I say OK (which I always do), she will sit very seriously on my knees for the whole routine. However, tonight, now that she is two and very grown up, she asked me to give baby a “worsey ride” instead, which I did. Then it was her stuffed friend Lambie’s turn, then her older sister A. brought Woofer for a ride, then Biffy Bean, and finally E. asked me to give the baby’s tiny plastic bottle a ride, but I drew the line there. Later, at the supper table, E. had the doll baby on her knees holding its little hands for a “horsie ride”, and sure enough she was going through the motions and saying “nim nim nim”, "jiggy jog, jiggy jog”, and “galpa galpa galpa all fall down”.

Learning and growing is what they do, E. included, and watching them do it, starting to take over control of their own lives and activities, is our particular joy every time we see them. Certainly worth coming back for!