Days Chock Full of Sweetness

When Landon arrived yesterday he put in his requests right away: 'Grammy, choca puddin, pokcorn and candy pwease'.

You can tell I'm all about healthy eating when grandkids come to visit!

He headed straight to the 'snack cupboard' which is on the lower level of cabinets, and started digging. He let me know there was 'no pokcorn Grammy' which is just weird at my house. I like popcorn more than anybody I know and we're rarely out of it. But we were.

No problem! I realized Landon probably hadn't ever really seen popcorn pop, so I dug out my electric popper and a jar of Orville Redenbachers, set him on the counter with the popcorn dish and had fun watching him watch.

At first he had no understanding that contraption would produce popcorn. Where were the little paper envelopes wrapped in plastic that he's used to?

When it started coming out, the look on his face was just priceless. He'd never actually seen popcorn go from kernels to white fluff, and it took him about five seconds to start grabbing at it. This was way more fun than waiting for the microwave - you can just sit there and scoop it up as it flies out, and if the dogs are with the program, they'll position themselves directly below to catch the overflow...

I pulled out the fun popcorn containers, and we were set. We'd already been down to the basement to do some digging in the keepsake boxes. We found Uncle D's sock monkeys, probably 15 years old at least, but Landon labeled them his 'new toys' and spent a happy afternoon playing with them, and a football helmet, and Dan's old plastic indians and soldiers. Watching another little boy play with toys that were once enjoyed by my boy is just sweet. Entertainment of choice was Jungle Book, checked out from the library, and we had such fun singing 'Bare Necessities of Life' together, and sometimes joining Baloo the Bear, dancing around the family room. I'd be completely smitten with my grandkids if it was only for the fact that they don't laugh at my singing or dancing. I'm confident someday they won't remember what I sounded like, or looked like, just that we had fun together.

At some point during the day, being with this little one made me really miss the other three, and the verses of the song, 'when you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with' came to mind. Having to choose stinks. I want to be with them all, all the time. (Well, maybe not ALL the time, but you get the drift.) We're not going there or I just get all mooshy over it, so I'm pulling up my boot straps and moving on.

We moved on to the business of dyeing Easter eggs.

I let him mix the colors, squeezing the food coloring bottles with his little hands.

There's something very sweet about watching a little kid drop in a white egg, then see it come out bright and pretty. He was very pleased with himself. One cup ended up being brown, but the fact that he had me write 'Dino' and 'Ceratops' on the eggs, maybe that was just right.

Such fun together, and he was more than proud to show his beautiful results to Daddy and Mama when they came for supper, after which he had that previously requested 'choca puddin'. Sweet, sweet stuff indeed!

I do love that when my grandkids from Texas phoned to thank us for the Easter package, the four year old promptly thanked us for the peeps and chocolate marshmallow eggs, never mentioning money. The seven year old said, "Grammy, thanks for the $5. I'm going to use it to go toward the sixteen lego sets I'm saving for."

Yesterday I was driving through the neighborhood, with Landon in the back seat. We passed a house with a playground, and Landon popped up and said, (prompted I'm pretty sure by his crazy Daddy), "Grammy, you're loaded. Buy me a playground pwease..." Best laugh of the day, gut laughing while driving down the street.

How can you not love little kids? Did you have a belly laugh yesterday? Maybe today you should find a little kid and spend some time with them. It's bound to be full of sweetness, whether it's dancing in the family room, taking a ride in the car, or five minutes on the phone, listening to their take on life. They'll likely think you're beautiful, a good dancer, loaded with money, giver of good gifts, and full of fun. It just doesn't get any better than that!