Kaylee, my little blond granddaughter, has for most of her life been Grandma's girl.  Gemey picks her up almost every week, and they hang out together.  Sometimes it's just the two of them, many times with her two cousins.  Kaylee seems to enjoy both situations, the former because it is always cool to have an adult with a credit card all to yourself.  The latter because a girl just can't have enough boys to boss around.

 

I have observed over the years that there is a division in our grandchildren's development.  My wife is a nurturer and she pours her love into all the grand-kids.  We have arranged our lives so that she can do this and I find special delight in knowing that the grand-kids get lots of grandma attention, and that Gemey is rarely happier than when she is able to dote upon them.

 

Grandpa (me) is still pretty popular, but they have to reach a certain age before I am in my element.  I am a teacher/mentor by nature. I don't really start to connect until we can have fairly lengthy discussions.  Gemey has all the talent in dealing with the irrational neediness children can exhibit.  I confess that this is not my strong suit, and hence the aforementioned division.

 

All of the grand-kids, and my nephew, transit to Grandpa's domain eventually.  Kaylee's transition may have begun a few weeks ago when we went shopping together.  Normally around me she is fairly quiet, but she opened up and we were able to have a few nice discussions about this and that.  I certainly didn't ply her with a lecture on the finer points of Calvinism, or of the Laffer Curve.  I just listened to her talk about the things that mattered to her.

 

The next week I came home and found her at the kitchen table, just finishing up from dinner.  I told her that I'd like to show her some things about electricity.  She was game. 

 

I came upstairs with some tools, wire, handy boxes and other electrical stuff to build a simple light circuit.  We talked about hot and neutral as she learned to strip wires, bend the ends into a shepherd's crook and connect them to terminals.  She looked bored a couple times, but stuck with it, regaining interest as we slogged along stripping wires and connection a switch to a lamp holder and screwing the plates and covers into place.

 

When we finished, I plugged the whole business into a socket.  She flipped the switch, but it was her face that lit up.  The incandescent luminance danced in her eyes, and I was rewarded with an "awesome".  She switched her creation on and off several times before being called to bed by grandma.  Kaylee sleepily told Gemey that she had had fun, but that grandpa uses really big words.