Kids. Entertained so cheaply...

 I hope to someday have it explained to me how time seems to accelerate the older I get. If you had told me at age ten that I would have to wait a year for something, it would have been agony. Yet my grandson, Avatar, turned eight last week, and I am positive it was only a couple of years ago that his father called me to tell me that my daughter had given birth a few moments ago.

I want to slow the passage of time because it does not seem real that he is sporting his adult teeth.

It doesn't help that he is only five years younger than my son. I feel like I miss so much, even though he lives only three blocks away.  

At his family birthday party I watched him open his gifts with gratitude. He seemed to genuinely love all his presents. But when all the unwrapping excitement was over, where did we find him?

You got it---playing with the box!

His uncle, my son, is also entertained cheaply. Nearly every place we go, Weston can be found doing a variation of this:

He delicately balances on the ground, his bed railing, stone benches, fire pits, logs--anything that will act as a fulcrum. He has been forbidden to balance on the arm of my couch, so he never balances there. Anymore. When I'm around. 

Last week, Weston came home from an evening gathering with a few friends. He looked like my son anyway.  After he had been home a few minutes, he asked me to come see him in his room. I quickly learned that although my son appeared to come home from the get-together unscathed, that was not the case.

 

As soon as he turned on the black light in his room I realized that he had been decorated. By a girl. The yellow marker didn't show during the course of normal conversation. I later discovered that this magic can only be performed by the neon yellow Sharpie highlighter.  How fun is that! So the next time you're looking for a cheap way to occupy kids, get out your black light and Sharpies.

And when your kids come home from a party looking normal, don't you believe it. Give 'em the old black light test first.