Photo A Day, Days 26 & 27: "Enjoy the Little Things" and "Under My Feet"

I suppose this could be considered cheating, combining two days into one. And even though I was a couple of days behind, I honestly intended to write two separate entries for this weekend. But when I found my subject for “Enjoy the Little Things” and realized it was also perfectly appropriate for “Under My Feet,” I couldn’t help combining them. And when you see my photograph, you’ll understand why.

Tiny toys are the bane of every parent of small children. As much as kids love big play kitchens and oversized stuffed animals and giant toy fire trucks, it seems like they spend even more time playing with the tiny cheapo toys that came from McDonald’s or in a 30-pack from the Dollar Store or the local party store. (Or the tiny not-so-cheapo toys that came from the Lego store.) And these tiny toys have two major problems: 1) they are so small that they are constantly getting lost (between couch cushions, at the bottom of Mom’s purse, under the seat of the car, in the pocket of a seldom-worn jacket), and 2) they are constantly – and painfully – underfoot.

The most obvious case of tiny, underfoot, hated-by-parents toys are Lego blocks. Not the big Duplos that you can convince your kids are Legos until they’re about 3 years old, which are much softer underfoot and come in bright colors that can be seen from the moon, but the genuine article, the miniscule, same-color-as-the-carpet, only-one-way-to-make-a-spaceship-from-this-set, 3,000-pieces-per-package, sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth, Daddy-will-you-put-this-together-for-me stuff of parental nightmares. The one minor advantage to Lego blocks, of course, is that since you have 500,000 of them around your house, any one piece that gets broken or “accidentally” thrown away will not be missed by your child. (It may suddenly be missed by you when you are attempting to construct that scale model of the Millennium Falcon that your kids have been begging you to build for weeks, however.)

But with pretty much any other tiny toy, your child will know – and weep – when one is missing. At the moment, my daughter’s favorite tiny toy is a pair of plastic pteranodons that Santa bought by the dozen at the party store and tucked into her stocking on a whim. Now, we can’t leave the house without mother and baby pteranodon in tow. Conveniently, they’re small enough to fit both of them in a pocket or purse, and they’re soft plastic so repeatedly dropping them on the floor in church or, say, a dance recital (not that that has actually happened, of course, but hypothetically) is not disruptive to others nearby. But because there are so many places they can be tucked, there are also so many places they need to be looked for every time they disappear. I now plan on leaving the house 15 minutes earlier than usual no matter where we’re going so we can stage a massive dinosaur hunt before getting in the car.

But I’m glad that my kids do know how to enjoy the little things. Even if those little things do tend to end up under my feet.

Train Wreck of Thought

After five years of marriage, my husband is quite used to my blurting out a statement that seems to have no relation to the conversation we were just having. A typical train of thought for me goes something like this: My husband says to me, “Tonight’s lasagna was delicious.” I recall that my mom often made lasagna from that same recipe for church potluck dinners. Every summer, our church would host a food booth at the local Independence Day Celebration. One year, the entertainment included a troupe of belly dancers, one of whom had been my high school math teacher. Over the course of the three years I had her, she divorced and reverted to her maiden name then married again, so she had a different last name each year I was in her class. Two of those names were somewhat unusual and the third was very simple. This thought caused me to blurt out, “Sweetheart, if you die before me and I remarry, it will be to someone with a very common last name.”

If you cut out the thought process in between and simply juxtapose his comment about the lasagna and my comment about him dying, it could be a rather alarming conversation. Fortunately, he knows me well enough to extrapolate the chain of events going on in my head. (Or at least to trust that there is one that does not include the administration of poison.)

Unfortunately, my son has apparently inherited my tendency for the non sequitur. And since he is only 3-1/2, he rarely explains the chain of thought which led him from Point A to Point B. Also since he is only 3-1/2, the leaps in logic within that chain often defy adult understanding – or at least prove an interesting challenge to recreate.

Here is a prime example of his thoughts with less than obvious connections: The other day, he asked me why Daddy and I don’t get married every day. After all, we kiss all the time. I explained that you only have to get married once, usually with a special ceremony and fancy clothes, but then you stay married and you don’t have to do it over and over. I showed him our wedding album and reminded him that the family photo at the top of our stairs was from our wedding day. He was very quiet and looked thoughtfully at all the photos for a few minutes, then asked, “Okay, but Mommy, why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore?”

Comments like that make me wonder what goes on in that funny little head of his. I imagine that the chain of thought went something like this: Mommy and Daddy got married before I was born. Mommy says that she used to be a little girl a long time before I was born. When she was a little girl, she liked to play with dolls, just like Tiny from Dinosaur Train does. I would like to play with Tiny from Dinosaur Train, except that there aren’t dinosaurs any more. “Hey, Mommy, why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore?” It’s actually quite reasonable logic.  

But sometimes I just can’t get into his head deep enough to understand the connections he’s making. Connections between comments like, “The water in our pool is really warm,” and “Once my toenail turned a funny color and fell off.” Or “Daddy bought me a shovel at Home Depot,” and “Germs get into your lungs if you don’t eat enough healthy food.” Or “When I grow up, I’ll be big like Daddy,” and “How many oranges fit in your shoes?”

Although when it comes to statements like that last one, I think it’s probably better not to try to figure it out. Some of the mysteries of life are better left as mysteries.