Little man Drake absolutely loves ALL LIVING THINGS! ALL! His favorite critters are ANTS! Yes readers, little guy loves, adores, fixates, hovers, draws, and plays with ants, and would bring them all into his room if he could…but we manage to catch him in time.
His favorite pass time is to draw pictures of ants. He will even take markers and draw them ALL OVER HIS ARMS! “No my love,” I tell him. “Just draw them on paper…”BUT GRANDMA IT WASHES OFF,” he replies. With hands on my hips I tell him…”Listen to grandma my sweet boy, just draw on the paper.” With hands on his hips he replies…”But grandma it washes off…okay grandma?” UGH! Time to fasten my seatbelt and go for a ride.
Here’s the thing I tell him. You don’t want to have marker all over your little arms. Here’s the thing grandma…IT WASHES OFF SO IT’S OKAY…right? Noooooooooo…you have to draw them on paper…oh my where is my Advil?
After the marker fiasco he will say: “Grandma I love ants!” I will say, “I know my love!” He will say: “Grandma I love sugar ants.” I will say, “I bet you do sweet boy.” He will say: “I love carpenter ants too, grandma.” Choke…choke…I will say, “those are sooo cool too little man.” “Grandma,” he will say…while looking at me with those beautiful big brown eyes…”I LOVE FIRE ANTS!” I know you love fire ants I reply, but you can’t play with them because they will bite. No they won’t he tells me. Yes they will I tell him. They’ve never bitten me graaaaandma he tells me. YES THEY HAVE I look him in the eye and tell him. By now my hands are moving towards my hips and I’m getting ready to do the grandma hustle. Listen my love you can’t play with fire ants. You have been bitten a number of times and it made you cry. Now I hear “I’M FINE GRANDMA!” Oh Lordy, Lordy…
Listen mister, you can’t play with every bug. Some bugs bite. Some bugs sting. Got it? That’s when I hear “But grandma…” and I know I am dead in the water. Now he wants to bring them into the house. I try and explain that you don’t really want to do that because they can get into food. Of course that didn’t work because he thought that was quite funny. You don’t want to bring them in because they can get all over everything. That didn’t work either because he found that awesome…bugs everywhere! Doesn’t get much better than this.
Once we get into the ant zone there is NO escaping. This conversation can go round and round and round. Sometimes it can get ugly and he will start crying. Seeing as how I can’t take it when I see him cry I realize I have to come up with a plan. I thought this was brilliant on my part. I finally told him: “Ask mommy when she gets home from work.” He said: “I will do that grandma. I’ll ask mommy why she says no. You never tell me NO!” After spending a few minutes laughing to myself I started feeling sorry for my daughter…but I will never tell her what I did.
