The Little Man's Visit, Part I

Reading a Search and Find Book with Gramma

As an unplanned consequence of the birth of his little sister, Haydin is spending part of the summer with his Papa. Here's a recap of the first day of his visit.

The Little Man arrived in our dominions at about four AM, Wednesday and Gramma chose not to wake me. Instead, they went straight to bed and I didn't see the Little Man until supper time next day.  When I got home from work, I learned that he had sprayed gramma with the hose when they were at Minerva's watering her flowers. That was late afternoon. When I arrived, the two of them were in the kitchen, at the table, and it took me a minute to realize that something was wrong with Gramma's appearance. Her hair was all unkempt and sort of matted down, very much unlike her. It looked like she'd been in the shower with her clothes on. She told me to ask the Little Man what happened. But when I did, he just looked down and said, "I don't know." But, gradually, he owned up to what he'd done. Evidently, the two of them sprayed each other. They actually had a blast! Haydin thought it was way cool. And I would pay the price for this, later.


While Mom was making supper, the Little Man visited me in my office. The very first thing he wanted was for me to read a book to him. He chose one of my picture postcard albums and we sat down in my recliner. All we did was look at post cards. I started out describing them, (at some point, he reached up for no particular reason and gave me a kiss on the cheek) then it became sort of a game of describing things in them, or picking out certain things: American flags, battleships, sailboats, lighthouses, castles, barns, cars, bridges, and all sorts of things. We went through two and half albums!

Haydin told me while we were looking at the post card albums that we were going to the store later to see the trains. First day here and he's already making decisions. After we ate we looked for his shoes. All his stuff was in Sarah's room (end of the hall) and I saw a pair of running shoes with socks stuffed into them. They were huge! So I said, here are your shoes---no, these can't be your shoes; look how big they are! I made him sit down and hold up a foot. I put one of the shoes next to his foot and showed him that it was way too big for him. He just laughed. Then I found this red and black pair. Some kind of stretchy slippers. They were more his size, so I said "Here you go, put these on." So he sat down and tried pulling them on himself. For some reason I wandered back to the living room and Mom told me that his shoes were in his room, by the suitcase.... The very same running shoes! Haydin had followed me out and overheard the conversation and, as we returned to Sarah's room to get those shoes, he said, "See, I told you."

Here in Augusta, it's been in the upper 90s all week, like normal for this time of year. When we went out the front door to go to Barnes and Noble's, the Little Man, who makes his home in the state of Washington, said, "It's HOT out here!"

At B&N, he made a beeline back to the kids' section and started playing with the trains with some other kids. (There are always other kids there). While Mom was in the cafe getting our coffee, the Little Man said to me, "I've got to go poo-poo." So we went to get Mom, but she was already on her way back, via another route, so we missed each other. When we returned to the kids' section, and explained the problem, Haydin said he did NOT have to go. Which meant that our visit didn't have to be cut short.

I took a picture of Haydin and gramma looking at the search and find book. But right after that, Haydin looked up at gramma---it was very quiet and he said right out loud, "You pooted!" After which Mom and I were suitably embarrassed. We stayed over an hour. About eight o'clock we started to get our things together to leave. The Little Man didn't want to go, but he very peacefully surrendered to the inevitability and helped me put away the books we had out. I picked him up and we all started for the center aisle. Along the way, the LM said to me, totally unprompted, "Thank you for bringing me to the library."

The sun was very bright, so I showed him how to shield his eyes with his hand. So he used both hands. You should've seen him walking with both hands covering his eyes. His hands were so far down over his eyes that all he could see was his own feet, if that.

I tried to make a video of Gramma helping the Little Man brush his teeth before bedtime, but by the time I figured out how to work the thing, they were finished and Mom was anxious to get to bed, the previous night having been a long one. They went into the bedroom and shut the door, but after a few minutes, the Little Man came back out, clad in his Sponge Bob jammies. He climbed up in the chair with me---I was at my desk on the computer. When he was up he said, "Papa."

I said, "What?"

And he said, "I love you."

I think he went right to sleep after that. I know I did.