Babysitter Tales: Leaves and Rocks

For the first few hours of babysitting duty today, I was watching only A2. When I got there, the back door was open, blocked with a baby gate, but he kept going over there and looking up at the trees, so I decided to let him go out. When we were there, he was showing me how to ride a motorcycle, soundeffects and all, he noticed all the leaves on the ground.

He asked "Was tha?" and I told him that they were leaves, and that they came from the trees over their deck. He thought it was hilarious that leaves fall, and he kept looking up at the ones still on the tree, laughing, and then looking at the ones on the ground and saying "Byebye!" when the brushed them off.

After crashing his bike a few times, and telling a spider to come down from it's web in a tone that implied it shouldn't have been up there to begin with, we went down to the back yard. Their house is on a hill, with the back yard much lower than the front yard, and we spent about an hour or so walking up and down the hill while the baby dug up rocks to throw. He loved the way the little ones rolled for ages, but he loved to heave the big ones even though they didn't go as far when he threw them.

After he started getting tired, he found a little place where the roots had made sort of a step on the hill, and he sat on it, and dug around at the rocks there. He handed some to me, saying they were for certain family members, and then threw them all away. Then he found one that had a shiny patch on it and gave it to me--when I had to put it down to use my hand for something, he picked it up and put it back into my hand and told me to hold it. Then he found a big square rock, about the size of a deck of cards, with a yellow side and a brown side and one end green with moss, and he loved it.

He sat right next to me, scootched forward so his feet were on top of mine, and told me some story that I couldn't understand at all, one that involved a lot of gesturing in all directions, pointing to his square rock, laughing and saying the few words I understand that he says--things like "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "Momom" and "Dadda"--and hitting the stones together, just the corners, and looking at how the minerals in them sparkle.

He brought the square rock back inside to show his parents; whatever that story was, it was important!

I'm amazed at how early the storytelling is kicking in!