Last weekend my husband and I went up to North Carolina to help celebrate my grandparents’ 70th wedding anniversary. While we were there, we also got to spend time with our two nephews who are 1 and 4-years old.
The morning after the party we were sitting in my parents’ kitchen watching my two nephews play. The baby is starting to pull himself up on furniture but he’s still fairly unsteady, so one of his parents is usually close by. His mom was helping him hold onto a chair when she looked down at him and then leaned over to talk to my mom.
“Grandma,'” she said, “I bet you haven’t had your new chairs licked yet.”
This struck me as so funny because all I could think about was my industrious little nephew crawling determinedly around the kitchen, checking out the state of all the furniture. “What’s this,” I imagined him thinking, while wearing a tiny superhero cape, “unlicked furniture?! Don’t worry, Grandma, I AM ALL OVER THIS.”
Meanwhile, after blowing through all the adults and their energy, the 4-year old was busy entertaining himself in the corner. He is all boy; just give him a train, a plane, or an automobile, and he is in heaven.
“Look,” he said, indicating his latest creation, “a tower. And there’s a princess!”
“Oh wow,” I said, “there’s a princess in a tower? Are you going to rescue her? Are you going to climb up the tower to get her down?”
There was no answer as we watched his bulldozer draw closer and closer to the princess, eventually crashing right through the tower and sending the princess rolling across the kitchen floor.
“Well, hey,” said, my dad, “it got the job done.”
My mom and I looked at each other as she lifted her palms to form an imaginary scale.
“Fairy tales as told by girls,” she said, motioning with her right hand, “and fairy tales as told by boys.”
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