I has always assumed that kids starting making more sense as they got older. Today while I was babysitting APRF and Older Brother we decided to walk to Blue Slide Park, a sizeable park with tons of climbers and slides (all of which are blue, duh) as well as this really cool chute type blue slide that is actually cut into a hill. Kids bring pieces of cardboard to make the slide down faster. Older Brother is 9 or 10 (I should probably know that I guess) and I let him go do his own thing, keeping him in my peripheral vision while APRF scrambled back and forth on the largest climber, sort of playing an unspoken game of “catch me if you can.” Unfortunately this neccessitated me running up and down a steep hill over and over in the 77 degree heat (does it concern anyone else that it is 77 degrees in Pittsburgh in the middle of October?? No wonder the polar bears are drowning). Anyway, after a lot of chasing and sweating (mostly on my part) APRF stopped inside one of the little areas of the climber.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t want you to see me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like you.”
This was sort of odd cause I hadn’t done anything by this point to raise APRF’s hair-trigger ire. He turned to face the wall.
“Do you have to poop?”
“Yeah. I have to go poopies.”
I called Older Brother, who led us to the concession stand/toilets up near the baseball field and APRF unloaded, washed his hands and was back in a good mood.
After about an hour we headed back to the boys’ house so APRF could have his nap. Several yards out of the park, Older Brother removed his Croc to shake a rock out and was circled by a lazy bee. I stood still, hoping the kid would be cool and not freak out like some people do around bees. He handled it pretty well and the bee flew off, but as he replaced his Croc he looked up at me with worried eyes and said, “I really wish that bee would leave me alone when I’m in my own personal foot.”

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Um, I thought they got easier to understand when they got older…