Babysitting

I step across the threshold, a grandmother bearing gifts. The floor is covered with hundreds of tiny planes. "Big boy panes," or larger versions of these Disney designed toys with names like Ripslinger, Skipper, and El Chupacabra cover an end table. There are planes named Dusty and Rochelle and Leadbottom, the personalities and peculiarities of which are known intimately by my grandson, Tripp, nearly three.

"Whipslinguh," "Skippuh" and the others fire his imagination. I'm inclined to dislike Disney products and detest commercialized TV in general, but I know to keep my bias in check. I refrain from commenting on the dopey painted grins. Just last weekend everyone went to the Cradle of Aviation Museum and Tripp was so overcome by the sight of a NASA artifact, he sank to his knees in reverence.

"Which one is this?" I ask, holding up a red-winged plane painted with colors resembling the British flag.
"Bulldog," Tripp says promptly.
"What about this guy?" I point to another light blue and white one that looks like a VW bus with wings.
"Fliegenhosen!"
"Lederhosen?"
"No, Fliegenhosen!"
"Weinerhosen?"
"No, Fliegenhosen!" chuckles Trip, as in, "You'll never get this, Beauma."


Tripp flashes me his little imp grin and shyly waits to be given his "pesent," a set of small trucks.
"I open it?" he asks politely.
"Of course," I say, pausing to lift his baby brother, Oliver, from his high chair, where he has been pawing tiny gluten-free Os into his mouth.
"A wainbow!" says Tripp, busy with the fussily tied ribbons of different hues around his package.
"Yes," I say.
"I am a wainbow!" he announces and parades about the room with a rainbow ribbon hat.
"My trucks!" he says a bit later after we have the package unwrapped.
He races them and lines them up and races them some more, and gives them names while Ollie jounces between my legs.

Ollie is easy. I plop him on a blanket with a bucket of toys and he plucks them out and mouthes them, while Tripp and I build "sings" - garages for the new trucks and runways for the interminable planes with Legos and blocks. We undo the knot of rainbow ribbon and make a belt. We stuff the belt into a jar.

I offer breakfast.
"Ready for some scrambled eggs and toast?" I ask Tripp.
"Yeah!"
However, once served, Tripp pokes them sadly with a spoon and whispers, "No sanks."
"What do you mean, no sanks? You said you wanted eggs."
"I don't yike them."
I try cereal. "No sank you," and raspberries - a polite shake of the head.

Your son doesn't eat. I text my daughter. Try Nutella she texts back. Nutella is not a food, I reply. Served with fruit and waffles it is! she responds.

We agree on apple slices "wisout the skin."

We build towers and topple them. We sing the ABC song, first in English, then in Spanish. We count to twelve in Spanish and English. I sneeze like Donald Duck and Tripp says Gesundheit! We read books, and squash several containers of homemade play dough into one big pile and mash it and bash it and mark it with a T.

I give Ollie a bottle - one that has been assembled by Tripp, with three incomprehensible components not unlike a NASA spacecraft - and after turning on some Mozart, lift Ollie into his swing, where after a slight whimper of protest he naps.

"I wonder if Ollie sometimes gets into your stuff," I say to Tripp, "Now that he's learning to crawl a bit."
"It's hard," he sighs.
"It's because he loves you so much and wants to do what you do."
"Yeah," Tripp agrees.
 Then we fly the "panes" around the room, making whispered chuffing and engine sputtering noises gently, so as not to wake Ollie, who is "seeping."


                                                                          *