L1 (age 5) and I were in a conversation about how much room someone had in their extended cab pickup.
Me: Mr. N has very long legs, so there’s not a lot of room for people to sit in the back seat.
L1: Why does Mr. N have very long legs?
Me: Because they need to be long enough to reach the ground.
L1: Oh. <Silence for 30 seconds> But Mom, even if he was very tiny, he would still reach the ground!
I asked L2 (age 3) this question at bedtime last night.
Mommy loves me and Daddy and L1… And my friends: Mr. Kevin and Mr. Tim and Hazen… And…. just everybody loves me. Except the bad guys.
The boys love Little Einsteins and they love to play Little Einsteins in the backyard. The characters on Little Einsteins have a red rocket named “Rocket” that transports them to all of their adventures. In the make-believe world of Amazing boys, their Little Tikes boat-shaped sandbox/wading pool with cover is their Rocket. I’ll often find them sitting on top of the cover while they exclaim “We’re going on a mission!” and sing, “Everyone to Rocket / Rev it up now / 5 – 4 – 3, 2, 1!” And sometimes they even take L3 (1yr) with them — L1 (5yrs) boosting L3 up on top of the boat with them and then back off as they pile in the wagon to go to the next part of the adventure.
Today, I was helping Mr.A add pickets to the new backyard fence and the fence was blocking my view of the children playing. I heard them singing the Little Einsteins theme song and then vaguely, I heard L3 crying and realized that I couldn’t see L3 playing by the playset anymore. MrA asked what was happening to L3 — he was crying, but it sounded very distant.
I put in my last screw on the picket and headed off to figure out what was going on. The two big boys were sitting on top of “Rocket” singing away and L3 was no where to be seen… Not seen! Oh no!
“Off, off!” I yelled as I ran towards the boat. The boys piled off the boat as I pulled the hard cover off and discovered Nathaniel screaming inside the Little Tikes boat. I picked him up and comforted him and then followed up with the boys.
“But we were heading on a mission,” they said, “so he needed to be inside Rocket so he could go on the adventure with us!”
I acknowledged their heart and the pointed out the fact that L3 obviously didn’t like it since he was crying so much.
“We kept opening up the lid to give him toys so he would be happy and not cry, but he just kept on crying anyway.”
I made sure I communicated how much I loved their hearts and how thankful I was that they were including their brother, but that they shouldn’t put him inside Rocket.
“Okay,” said L1. “Next time we’ll take him on top of Rocket with us.”
Sounds good, I said.