A Toddler and a Pre-schooler Come for a Visit

If you were 4½ years old and your brother was 2, which water feature would you prefer to play in -- a clean, well appointed plastic water table with toys and animals and buckets and scoops, or . . . . 

        . . .  your grandmother's birdbath that you could throw flowers into?

I'll let you guess which one occupied my grandchildren during their recent visit. They came last weekend and I had borrowed toys, a little riding car, a scooter and a water table to stock my yard for their amusement.

The water table occupied them for five minutes until they spotted the nearby birdbath. They then spent 40 minutes running back and forth to pluck flowers from my garden and toss them into the birdbath. Such giggles! Such laughter. Such running back and forth. I giggled too!

Another afternoon they spent half an hour picking up fallen rotting apples and heaving them into a shrub by my potting bench. Again, the absolute joy and screaming laughter was incredible. Now the apples are all picked up, the mulch area is clean, and I have a ton of rotting apples under my sumac bush. But what fun times!

They had a good time scrambling under the pine trees in front of the house to gather pine cones in a bucket and then dump them into the garbage, although the 2 year old lost interest before his sister did. But the 4½ year old thought it was important work (which it was) and kept at it for a long while.

I was fortunate to be able to borrow riding toys and a water table and kids' things from my friend for this visit, but really, none of it was necessary. The joy of tossing flowers in a birdbath, the fun of throwing apples into a shrub, and the reward of finding pine cones was what really delighted them. And me too -- this is what you have a garden for, after all.

We did other things too -- an afternoon at the park, time indoors reading and doing puzzles and drawing and playing with little cars, and meals together, including my birthday dinner. And bath time in my big soaker tub was a new adventure.

It was a wonderful weekend. Both my sons came and I had some really good time with them and with my daughter in law. But of course the best of all was crazy impromptu fun with two little ones and sweet times snuggling them too.

Love.