From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

“Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Little boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails.”

He was a big SUPRISE! A boy has joined the family! All of us expected a third girl. To the amazement of all, Scout David arrived as the holiday weekend began, weighing in at 8 lbs 2 oz. stretching to  22”.

Thank Heaven for little boys and girls! I LOVE BEING A GRANDMA! Though I had no experience with brothers, I was lucky to raise both a son and daughter. I often dream about what life will be like for my little granddaughters, Elizabeth, Charli Esther and Max Margaret as well as their cousins Karter and Kennedy, who live far away in upstate New York. Will the girls dress up in frilly pink smocked dresses and lacy bonnets? Will Karter and Scout have their  own dolls to cuddle and love?    

I wonder, will Karter’s mom dress him in blue? Already I know the girls wear every colorful outfit imaginable. Will they enjoy music, painting, swimming, basketball and tennis? Will little boys and girls both play with trucks and make putt putt noises and zooming airplane noises? Will they play house and rock babies? Will they have a dog or cat? I hope they won’t want a snake or rat, a bunny who multiplies or a gerbil for a pet.  

Already, at their young ages, they’re fascinated with phones, watches and computers. Technology is everywhere, available to most everyone at every age. The girls love playing with their parents’ cell phones and computers, but also are fascinated by the 40-year-old toy phone with a dial and receiver that Kate and Andy played with as toddlers.

Times have changed. Today, parents are giving boys dolls to learn to cuddle, and girls are happy playing with trucks, airplanes and dinosaurs. My Andy loved his Joey doll so much that the doll’s head fell off from all of Andy’s squeezes and cuddles.

When Kate and Andy were little kids, all their neighborhood friends played together. They searched in the area’s woods for wild flowers and buried treasure. They created May baskets of pipe cleaners and colored paper, which they put on doorknobs, rang the bell and scattered to hide and avoid getting caught and kissed. They played school, drove their bikes through the neighborhood and had a ball swimming and at sledding parties down our big hill to the lake where they’d ice skate and cross country ski.   

Almost every kid had their own family dog, who tailed after the kids to their pals’ houses, where they’d be invited to come inside for a glass of milk and cookies. Our dogs Whiskers and Buddy usually tailed along wherever the kids went. All the dogs had names we knew, even if we didn’t know their owners’ names. Most moms were home, and dogs didn’t need leashes. Dedicated watchdogs constantly checked on the kids’ whereabouts, corralling them if they strayed out into the street or headed to the lake on their own.

I did notice some different interests of the boys and girls. Though all the kids loved playing outdoors,  Andy and his buddies were busy playing in our yard’s hackberry tree where they constructed a treehouse built with a million nails, scrap lumber and carpet samples. Kate and her pals Audra and Maisie played with their pink, yellow and blue plastic My Little Ponies and American Girl dolls. 

Summertime brought more kids and grandkids to the neighborhood. Jackson, Cooper, Ethan and Ellie told silly jokes and tales learned at school. They brought their bikes, bats and balls, belly laughs and lots of happiness to my house. They knew I always kept the cookie jar filled with their favorites, chocolate chip cookies. I loved to hear their stories and watch them play with Buddy, our Beagle.   

Kids loved to dive off our dock at the beach with water wings on their arms. They’d jump to me until they’d become more confident and began cannon-balling with hearty splashes and belly laughs. Kids love splashing in the water. Our granddaughters, two-year-old Max Margaret, Charli, just four years old, and Elizabeth, who is almost five, already love the lake and going to swimming lessons with Mom. All the kids ride bikes and hit tennis balls, play with dolls and buggies and love to put lipstick on each other and their dads.

Little girls in my neighborhood are already setting up lemonade stands to sell glasses of sweet lemonade to neighbors. Between setting up Kool-Aid stands, playing dolls and their trips to the pet store, life for kids here on the Point was quite an adventure. I hope kids of today will have wonderful childhoods playing in a lake and woods with a dog, a treehouse, a bike and lots of neighborhood friends.

Being a Mom, I soon learned that girls will be girls. They ran the show in this neighborhood, primarily because they were the older sisters of younger brothers. As a result Kate and Audra had a favorite past time, playing school. The girls pretended they were teachers in long play dresses with rulers.  They’d discipline their pupils, their younger brothers, when they got out of hand.  The girls made the boys wear dresses and called them Angela and Kissy. None of the older neighbor boys  would put up with these shenanigans!

Playing school lasted less than a year. The boys had to go outside to ride their Big Wheels, play ball and build their tree house with a thousand nails and a pulley to bring up their lunches. They built houses of refrigerator cardboard boxes and raced down the hill to the water to splash each other. The boys weren’t content for long sitting in school desks. They needed more activity, more noise.

Yes, boys will be boys. Girls will be girls. Thank heavens for little boys and girls. We adore these little people who have entered our lives. What a change they’ve made in my life! Today I certainly understand why we have kids in our twenties and thirties! Dave and I head for the couch for a nap when the children go home…we’re pooped, but soooo happy the grandkids are in our life!

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.