Grandma and Grandpa Have a Pond

After a week of pure bliss at the beach, we're back in Raleigh at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Kathleen has several favorite activities here: pushing chairs around, swinging on the swing, climbing the stairs, dropping pinecones into the gutters, and the pond.

Kathleen has had limited experience with bodies of water larger than her bath; the pool, the duckpond, the ocean, and now, my parents' pond. At the duckpond, we threw bread to the ducks, at the ocean we threw seashells and sand into the water, and so logic would follow that grandma and grandpa's ponds is also meant to have items thrown into it.

We got our first inkling of her tendencies when my father handed her a pine cone yesterday evening, so that she could go throw it in the gutter, the place where all pine cones belong. However, as we were in the backyard, no where near to the gutters, the pine cone went into the pond. That was banned, followed by pine straw, small rocks, her bread, and pieces of spiderwort she pulled off and threw into the pond. When we went to set the table outside, I handed her a fistful of forks, and had to stop her in the middle of a wind-up to send those into the pond, too.

After enough reprimands about the pond, I assumed that Kathleen had understood the interdict, as no more objects joined the fish. So this morning when she asked for some juice, I assumed she was thirsty and wanted to enjoy a morning refreshment on the terrace. When she came back for seconds, I thought that she must really like orange juice, a treat not available at home. But when the third request for juice came, close on the heels of the second, I followed her.

She carefully walked outside, placed the juice on a step, climbed down the step, placed the juice on the slate, climbed down to that, and then headed for the pond. My suspicions were heightened as I found suspicious splashes on the stones next to the pond, and the goldfish gathered near the splashes. And then they were confirmed as Kathleen neatly upended her cup into the pond. I never realized that goldfish like orange juice so much.