Father's Daze

It’s easy to forget how much laundry detergent you can go through in a week, until you have a little one around for a week.

Especially when his parents only drop him off with enough clothes for a weekend and he ends up staying a week and a half.

We wound up with Aiden for a full week plus because his parents were busy moving across the state and had to get it done before the end of the month.

Since it’s always easier to pack without a two-year-old (almost) around — they have a tendency to unpack boxes about twice as fast as adults can pack them — we volunteered to keep him for the week while Alex and Julia got everything packed up and moved to their new place.

Since their new place is only an hour or so away, as opposed to the three hours they were away before, there was a bit of motivation for us to help make it happen.

It also motivated his grandmother to do a little shopping — as if she needs any motivation — to pick up a few things Aiden didn’t have with him, whether he needed them or not.

For instance, Aiden had his winter jacket with a nice hood on it, but his grandmother decided he needed a nice, warm hat, so she went right out and got him one.

Aiden decided it was a great hat and took to wearing it all the time, even inside. We did get him to take it off before he went to sleep at night, but not without considerable objection and screaming — and that was just his grandmother.

He won’t be two for another month and a half, but Aiden already knows just how to make his grandmother happy — let her go shopping for him, then make like whatever he bought her is the greatest thing since sliced toast.

She also picked up a few new toys for him. According to his grandmother, apparently, a week is too long a time to go with playing with the same old toys over and over again.

Naturally, Aiden agreed with his grandmother completely and did his best butter up grandma by playing constantly with his new toys.

One of them was a riding toy with two buttons, one of which played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the other which played “Do You Know the Muffin Man?”

It would have been bad enough hearing either of those tunes incessantly, but Aiden soon discovered a latent talent for DJ-ing.

He figured out that he switch from one song to the other by punching the second button while the first one was still playing, and pretty soon he was sampling the two tunes in every seeming combination and permutation. It does make me wonder if that’s how Snoop Dogg started out.

With that long a stay, Terry and I obviously ran into some conflicts with our work schedules, which meant there were several “Take Your Grandson to Work” days last week.

He became a bit of a mascot at the ski hill, where his mother works during the winter. He was spellbound watching the kids snowboarding down the hill through the windows of the shelter building and had an equally great time sitting with them when they came inside. If he becomes the next Shaun White, we’ll know where it started.

He also spent a few mornings with me at the office, which I’m afraid wasn’t nearly as exciting — although Aiden did manage to find his own entertainment there.

For instance, he is fascinated by computer printers. Whether it’s the noise they make, the lights flashing on and off, all the buttons to push, the machines kept him mesmerized every time he came to the office with me.

The problem was, he soon figured out the button to turn it off and back on, which caused all kinds of noises and flashing lights. It also caused some rather long backups in the printing queues when Aiden would turn off the printer, then get distracted by something else and wander away without remembering to turn the printer back on.

To me, it was worth it if it kept him occupied for any length of time, but try telling that to my office mates who kept trying to figure out why the half-dozen or more pages they had printed weren’t coming off the printers. Maybe you’ll have better luck convincing them than I did.

NEXT WEEK: The grandparenting fun continues