We had several of A’Dell’s little cousins over for a day this week, so I had four little hooligans running circles around me instead of just one. We decided to go on a picnic in the field, and as I went around taking their “sandwich orders” little 3-year-old Luke informed me he likes “Peanut Butter and Cheese Sandwiches” and also “Ham and Jelly Sandwiches.” I questioned if he’d like a more popular choice of Peanut Butter and Jelly, but he was pretty sure his favorite was Peanut Butter and Cheese. I couldn’t bring myself to put a slice of cheese on peanut butter so I just made him a peanut butter sandwich.
When we got all of our lunches ready and carried blankets and pillows out to our picnic site, they all put on their sunglasses I had put in their lunch sacks. Both of the little boys wore them upside down, and it’s a good thing because I couldn’t get too upset with little Luke while he looked so cute, even though he quickly changed his mind about liking peanut butter. With his sunglasses barely hanging on his nose, upside down, he opened up his sandwich and looked up and me and exclaimed “Peanut Butter? I don’t like Peanut Butter at all.”
Life’s hard when you are three, and you can’t remember what that brown sticky stuff is called, so I offered him my hot dog and he was happy with that.
My daughter and I are what you call “dreamers” I guess; we love to go on picnics and “cloud-watch,” talking about what the different clouds look like—a dragon, a fish, a horse and so on. To us, almost every cloud looks like something, especially if you look at it long enough. But on this particular picnic, I learned that not all kids like to watch clouds. When I asked, “What does that cloud look like?” my little god daughter Claire quickly shot me a blank stare and mumbled, “It looks like a cloud.”
Our picnic was starting to look pretty grim with clouds looking like clouds and peanut butter sandwiches, and that South Texas heat that’s hard to ignore, even in the shade. But while Claire was denying that our clouds looked like a dragon, she soon spotted a reddish brown bird flying around in circles. They quickly decided it was “an eagle,” and they were entertained by that for a very long time.
So our picnic was saved by “the eagle.”
Take your kids on a picnic this summer. You can have a surprising amount of fun if go out and lay underneath a big tree, watching clouds (or birds), and listening to the awesome things kids say. And if you are wondering what kind of sandwich you might like…..try Peanut Butter and Cheese!