Our own versions of Christmas animation specials

Our grandson Aiden nearly became a museum piece over the weekend.

And our oldest grandson, Ty, helped us revisit an old holiday tradition that we hadn’t enjoyed for many years.

That tradition is the grade school Christmas concert, something we lived through many years of decades ago and can now start enjoying all over again.

Like so many things about being a grandparent rather than a parent, there’s a lot that’s better about these things this time around.

For instance, we don’t have to run around the night of the concert, pageant or what have you, searching for clean socks or the right shirt, making sure everybody is dressed and stays dressed — and clean — and getting to the school on time and getting everyone delivered to the right classroom.

Instead, grandparents just have to make sure they show up in time for the start of the concert and have the batteries in the camera fully charged.

This was Ty’s four-year-old kindergarten concert and we quickly spotted him on the top riser, resplendent in his paper reindeer antlers.

With the concert ready to start, Ty’s little brother, Nolan, passed from his grandparents to his parents, who were in charge of keeping him quiet and entertained. Once again, it was one of those grandparent “Been there, done that, got the gray hair — what’s left of it — to show for it” moments.

Ty proved he was his father’s son, as he spent much of the concert fidgeting, squirming, looking around and doing pretty much everything but standing still.

He did sing, too, although perhaps not with as much energy and enthusiasm as some of the others, but he lent his voice to the effort.

He and the rest of his colleagues did have motivation to get through the concert — juice and cookies afterward.

Surprisingly, we did get more than a cursory greeting from Ty after the concert, especially given the fact that we were standing within clear sight of the cookies and juice. He had a big hug for all of his admiring grandparents, but he didn’t tarry long before dragging us over for the juice and cookies.

We got to baby-sit his cousin, Aiden, over the weekend, and to help get him in the holiday mood we took him to the county museum Saturday for their display of Christmas animated figures.

We stopped for lunch first at a nearby Chinese buffet restaurant, where Aiden spent his time, in between his lo mein noodles and peanut chicken, charming and flirting with the waitress. It left us with the dilemma of explaining to a 20-month-old that it was a self-service buffet and no matter how many eyes he made at the waitress, it wouldn’t improve the food or the service.

The museum display features various animated characters that used to grace the windows of a downtown department store years ago, back when his grandparents were his age and even before. We soon found out that they still have the same effect on this generation of little kids as they did back in their original days.

The first display was a carousel, with stuffed bears riding around on various animals in front of old storefronts as a mother and her son watched amid the snow.

A simple concept, it would seem, but Aiden stopped and wouldn’t go any further. He was hooked.

We tried to explain that were a lot more displays in the next room, but again we had the futility of attempting to reason with a 20-month-old reinforced for us.

We finally got him into the next room, and Aiden’s protest cries soon faded when he saw the half-dozen or so different animated displays in there.

The central one featured Santa Claus in a crane moving a giant wrapped package to a pile of other wrapped packages. If I hadn’t kept a firm grip on him, Aiden would have had that box unwrapped faster than you can say “Merry Christmas.”

Apparently, all we have to give Aiden this year is a giant wrapped box that we keep moving back and forth in front of him. At least, that display kept him entertained and occupied longer than many of the presents he’ll be getting for Christmas will, I’ll bet.

Even though that room would have kept Aiden entertained until they closed the museum, there was one more thing we had to show him.

In another area of the museum they had a pedal toy corral, an enclosed area where they had about half a dozen old tricycles and pedal trucks and tractors from a former local toy manufacturer.

If we thought Aiden had obsessed over the carousel or the present on a crane, we soon learned we hadn’t seen anything at all.

Aiden found an unoccupied truck and was soon running it all around the corral — pedaling, it seems, is something he hasn’t quite mastered yet, but that didn’t stop him.

Indeed, we couldn’t stop him when we’d decided it was time to leave and head for home. Actually, it wasn’t our idea — they were starting to turn out the lights and lock the doors.

We tried enticing him with cookies, but he only threw them on the floor and went back to his green truck.

We finally carried him out, kicking and screaming, before the museum had to make him a permanent part of the exhibit. Somehow, a 20-month-old boy is not quite the animated figure they usually make part of their display.