Playing with perspective

My friend and I did each other a favour on Tuesday. I picked her son up from Meithrin (Welsh nursery) and babysat him for a few hours to give her enough time to be able to do something she needed to do. In return, I got to have one of my favourite honorary nephews to myself. It worked out perfectly for both of us.

While there's nowhere in the world I would rather have been that afternoon, I'd left a behind a to do list at work that was longer than I would have liked, and had a similarly long "life admin" list that I needed to tackle once my wee friend had been handed back to his Mama. Both of these lists were swirling around in my head as I left work, drove to the neighbourhood, then walked at near lightspeed (I hate the mere possibility of being late anyway, but when I'm collecting a child I'm ridiculously obsessed with being early) to the nursery. I was still mentally prioritising things (they all felt like they were either "urgent", "important", or both) when the kiddos were released, and Jumping Bean (Not his real name)! trotted over to me. 

He was done. I could tell just by looking at him. Nursery is exhausting when you're 3 1/3. 

Being 3, Jumping Bean only has little legs. Little legs that don't walk particularly quickly on a normal day, and that slow down to a metaphorical crawl when they're tired. The change in pace was notable to say the least. 

It could have seriously frustrating. But thankfully, it had the opposite effect. I had little choice but to slow down, both physically and mentally. And as I did, I started to appreciate the way Jumping Bean sees the world every day. 

We stopped to talk to a very exciting looking digger parked in the street. It didn't talk back, but that didn't matter. We stood on the railway bridge and waved a train as it moved away from us. The train driver didn't see us and didn't beep the horn, but that didn't matter either. We stopped to watch a worm wriggling. We found the house key that mama had left for us, and called it a treasure hunt.
We ate lunch and were excited that there was a new packet of yogurts with a choice of ALL the flavours.

We spent the best part of 45 minutes playing with a box, purely because we could.

Little things to an adult, but marvellous adventures to a small child. I was rather sad when I had to give him back.

Do you remember those lists? The ones that had occupied most of my thoughts a few hours earlier? The ones that were full of "all the urgent and important things"? Suddenly, nothing on them seemed critical anymore. Perspective is wonderful thing. I love talking to people with different life experiences to my own, but I'd forgotten how wonderful and exciting the world is when viewed through the eyes of a small child, and I was grateful for this timely reminder.