Kids are Fun, Kids are Grown Ups

I am always fascinated what the one year old, two year old or three year old can do. There is a difference between me and my younger sister and my younger brother, five and ten years, respectively. So I have some memories of some funny moments, and some not so funny. I remember that very first word I thought my sister was a parrot. I don't know what I was thinking then, but she loved it - may be that is why she is into breeding birds now. She also loved going into the barrel full of potatoes and water, and take a bath - and that was quite a scenario. Because my older sister and myself had to take care of both of my younger sister and brother, we used to do crazy stuff when playing. We had to entertain ourselves because we had one or two occasions when we received toys, and we only had one TV channel. Going back to the story, we used to build these snow walls between neighbor kids and then play war. Well few times the curiosity of my younger sister earned her few bruises in the head from snow balls, at least we did not need any ice for compressions. The best was also racing streets with my sister in the stroller. Accidents always happened, but lucky no injuries. Lucky there were no cars, but there were light posts to which we always happened to run into. We lost our sister few times upon the impact, no injuries as she always safely landed on the grass. She was only one and a half years old, and I was about seven years old.

Then five years later my brother was born, and so more kids on the street. My brother loved horses, and he had huge collection of them by the age of four years old. So what did he do? Well there was this kid across street who just started to walk at one, and somehow he by himself always made to our backyard. Well my brother then two, soon as he saw him, he always wanted to ride him. It looked funny, but we always had to separate them just in case the one year old's mother showed up. I think the idea came from horse collection.

And now thirty years later, do I have the same experiences with kids in family, and I do find that kids are talking much more and much more like adults. The latest, my cousin's three year old daughter was really entertaining us this holiday season. We had dinner together, and the little girl decided to be at the head of the table. She would converse with all of us, and her vocabulary was just amazing. The best line of the year was when mother offered her a cup of tea, with puzzled face she responded - 'How can you give your own child a hot tea' - very clever for the three year old.