Jade turns three

Yesterday I went to a birthday party for Jade, who turned three. Jade and her five-year-old sister, Lilyanne, kept me busy all afternoon. We watched my favourite movie, Finding Nemo. I love how they made that movie with one level of humour for kids and a whole other level of humour for adults.

Children are phenomenal multitaskers, so of course we couldn’t just watch the movie while we watched the movie. These are some of the things they suggested we do while watching the movie: colour, make jewelry, cuddle, wrestle, go for a bike ride, sit on our heels, pick our favourite fish, talk about things we’re scared of, do piggyback rides, squish each other, take pictures with my camera, do my hair and pretend we’re cats.

At the end of the day, seven exhausted adults were draped all over the furniture while the two little girls were still building momentum.

When I was a little kid I thought it was tragic that grownups just wanted to sit around on couches and talk to each other all the time. I felt sorry for them because their lives were so pathetic. The world was full of fun things to do like building forts and playing games and climbing trees and wrestling, but the poor grownups were always too tired for fun. And on those rare occasions a grownup could be persuaded to actually get up off the couch and play for a bit, they ran out of steam really fast and needed to sit down some more.

I also felt sorry for them because when they did have some energy they would waste it on housework and laundry and cooking. I assumed this was their idea of fun, because grownups could do anything they wanted and this is what they chose to do. I could hardly wait till I was a grownup: nobody would be the boss of me and I could stay up all night and play all the time and eat all my favourite foods and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

And that’s exactly what I do, except for work, of course, and housework, laundry, cooking and sitting on the couch.

(P.S. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms and people with moms out there.)