The Mysterious Mind of A Four Year Old

Posco(8) and Fastolph (4) were in the backyard raking leaves. In the backyard we have a pond and on occasion what looks like herons (I am not an orinthologist, so I am not sure exactly) come to do whatever it is that they do at the pond. I have no idea what it is, but it looks like they stand there and look at the water.
Now, when the rest of us see the herons there we look out the window, ooh and ah and say “oh, look at that pretty big bird”. Not Fastolph. He snuck behind the bushes quietly so he could jump out in front of it and make faces at it. I bet the bird had no idea it was involved in some strange prepetual game of tag. With that, the bird (who was the same height as Fastolph) spread it’s wings and flew away.
Now here the part I do not understand, what on earth would perpetuate Fastolph to jump in front of a bird the size of him and make faces at it? That would be the farthest thing from my mind.

7 comments

  1. The toddler brain is a mysterious thing. This morning Amalia decided that she needed to take a bite or two out of every apple in the fruit bowl. I was on the phone for about five minutes and she was able to eat about a whole apple’s worth of fruit, taken from a lot of apples. Guess who will be making apple sauce today!

  2. Erik,
    We like to go apple picking each fall and we bring home a couple of bushels of apples. Fastolph did the same thing one fall, taking a bite out of an apple here, and apple there.

  3. Hambet mystifies me too (though at the moment I don’t have any cute stories.)
    Pansy, you’ve got a heron in your back yard! How cool is that?! I would be getting the kids binoculars, little notebooks, and a field guide and sending them out to learn birdwatching.

  4. Pansy,
    At the farmers’ market today, I told the story of Amalia and mentioned that you had seen the same thing, and the apple farmer said that his kids did the same thing. He had to thoroughly inspect the bushels he took to market for bite marks. It must be hard-wired in our brains.

  5. The apple incident happens all the time with my four year old. I think it’s funny that he cannot stick to just one apple, finish it, then get another one if he is still in the mood for one. He takes a bite, then grabs another until I have 5 apples with one tiny bite in them. I cherish these moments.

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