Connections

Grasshopper is going to be 3 in June. I can barely believe how fast he's growing and how rapidly the synapses are firing and making connections in that amazing little mind if his.

At the dinner table tonight, JR and I were talking, and Grasshopper (who has an ear infection, thank you very much) asks, "What was dat noise?"

He notices things that my more experienced brain skims right over, so I had to think back to what had just been happening. Oh, right. I squirted a bit more ketchup on my plate for my sweet potato fries, and the plastic bottle made a "thump-tump" sound. Not a silly fart-type sound, just the noise of the plastic contracting under pressure and then expanding again when said pressure was relieved.

"Do you mean the noise the ketchup bottle made?" I ask him.

He nods.

"Well, that was just the noise of the bottle expanding and contracting." I tell him.

He thinks for just a moment.

"Like my juice!" he says and turns to his juice box and sucks really hard on the straw until the box contracts. Then he lets go, and the box springs back to its normal shape with a distinct thump. Grasshopper grins.

JR and I look at each other with our mouths wide open, because WOW! He gets things now. Things that I didn't know not-yet-three-year-olds got. Like, you know, physics. Which I opted out of my senior year of high school, just so we're all clear.

Sometimes motherhood is humbling in unexpected (and very enjoyable) ways.