Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Overheard exchange
Yesterday, Seb was playing race cars on the floor with Grandma, both sitting down and facing each other, rolling the cars back and forth. Grandma wanted to go take a nap, as she normally does in the afternoon. She told Seb “Grandpa is going to play with you ok.”
Seb, who usually takes a while to transition or adjust to a new idea, plus he is in between giving up naps so he was crankier than normal, naturally protests, “NO NO NO”
Grandpa stands in to take Grandma’s place, except he is standing, with his hands hanging to his sides.
Seb, realizing that the protest won’t work, tells Grandpa “Sit down Grandpa, sit down”
Grandpa, “No”
Seb, “Sit down!”
Grandpa, in all seriousness, “No. I’m a grown up. Why should I sit down!”
Me, speechless. Grandma, speechless, then proceed to shoo Grandpa away and took over playing with Seb again.
He and I had a small altercation the day before, and it wasn’t really resolved, we just agreed to disagree in the end because it was obvious that we both have different (and strong) viewpoints. But I just couldn’t believe my ears when he told my 4-yr old son that, in such a tone. You can just imagine what it must have sounded like. Yep, just like that. I don’t know if he realizes what he said was out of line. Sometimes it is so hard to live with someone in the same house. It’s been 2.5 months and I guess everyone’s getting kind of edgy. They are leaving in a couple of weeks. I hope it will leave us with good parting memories.
Sigh.
Added note: he’s usually pretty nice and easy to get along. Maybe it’s stress related to his work, or he hasn’t gotten over the argument with me, or he just plain sucks when dealing with toddlers (he was great when they were babies, but babies as you know don’t do much and don’t ask for much..) Whatever it is, I still think it was out of line.
on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 11:47 pm:
Sorry to hear about this. I could so picture my dad saying the same thing. Sometimes older men are more stubborn. I think it comes out more when they are told do to something. They don’t realize they are just kids. It was out of line though. hopefully the rest of the trip goes smoothly.