Chase

... helping grandmother chip ice in the back yard ...

In the time it takes other grandparents to drive to see their grandchildren, I can slip in the back door of the house where mine live, have a game of tag that exhausts all of us, and then get back home.

That is the beauty of living next door to each other.

Our version of the game of tag is taking on serious variations.

We use the same space – we run through the dining room, through the living room, down the hall, across the kitchen floor and we are full circle to the dining room again.

... exchanging my ice chipper for grandmothers ...
...hers seems to work better ....

We can run the circle clock-wise or counter clockwise.

We can hide behind corners and scare each other.

We can run around tables or chairs, or under or over them, or move them so they are in the runners way.

When I was young I liked watching the boy scouts play the game of tag where you only have to grab a handkerchief out of the pocket of the runner to tag him.

... figuring out how cold this ice really is ...

Michael and I have set up variations on that game, mostly because we don't have the right equipment.

First we used a piece of paper towel.

The next day when I came over he told me he wanted to play the game with the towel and I couldn’t remember what we had been playing. 

The penny drops slowly for me.

The next night when I babysat, Miranda had hidden the paper towels, so we used a wash cloth.

Today we had a lovely white silk neckscarf that floated out of our pocket as we ran the tag circuit.

Alice is collateral damage.

She can’t help but get in the way and gets knocked into walls or sprawls out in the middle of the floor from one of our chasing rounds. This morning she was standing on the tag track and I saw Michael shove her out of the way; the chips she was eating rose in slow motion out of her bowl and then scattered directly into the train room.

 “A major sweeping job in there now,” I thought and called out to Richard, “one casualty down – see if you can get her out of the way before we pass this corner again.”

I am busy taunting Michael as I run and to the pentatonic scale I sing, “Nanny-nanny boo-boo, I am faster than you. I am faster than Grandma Joan. I am faster than Great-grandmother Joan. I am the fastest woman in the world. You can never catch me. You are the slowest.  I am the fastest.”

... kings exe ...
truce term in a child's game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truce_term

... studying the difficulty of the ice chipping problem ...

 I ran so fast that my hair clip flew out of my hair and strands of white hair were going every-which way.  I couldn't see where I was going.

“Hold on. Stop.  King’s cross,” I cried out. “I have to fix my hair.”

I explain to him that when my fingers are crossed we have to put the game on hold for a minute and then we can race again.

 I tidied myself up and continued running.

“Hold on. King’s cross,” he soon cried out.

“Why,” I asked.

“I have to fix my hair,” he said, running his fingers through his brush cut.

Copy cat!

One of these days I will have to teach him soon is that if you cross your fingers while you are telling a lie, the lie doesn’t count as a lie.

But first I have to teach him how to lie.

Grandparenting is hard work.

Arta