impulses

I dropped in on our friends, Scott and Diana, last night. With an hour to wait before Zac's basketball game, and seeing as how their new house was just down the road from the school, I figured I'd go see what they were up to.

I toured the renovations, snagged a tater tot, and then settled at the kitchen table to talk with Diana while she sorted unbelievably small beads (her newest hobby). We enjoyed about nine seconds of conversation before Luke, her hard-to-ignore 2 1/2 year old, bounded in. I love that boy. There's just something about his big head that demands I pet it, every time he's in reach. From there, it's a short step to tickling. That leads to chase, and hide-and-seek, and throw-the-toy-and-see-who-can-get-to-it-first. Diana kindly let me play; after a bit, she stopped trying to get my attention altogether. Good thing I wore my pedometer (see previous post), because I got quite a work out chasing Luke around that huge house.

One thing I observed about toddlers last night: they're amazingly easy to distract. They can also be bull-headed as all get-out when they're completely focused on something, but unless they really put their mind on the task at hand, any old pretty that comes along can draw them away. We were right in the middle of an intense game of "will she come to get me around the left side of the kitchen, or the right?" when I noticed it became awfully silent in the living room. I peeked around the right side wall and saw Luke trotting into his sister Madison's bedroom. He abandoned me, right in the middle of our game, simply because he heard the other kids playing. I had to go in there and remind him that I was the guest, I had him first, and I wasn't done with him.

I got him re-engaged in our game, but just a few minutes back into it, he noticed his dad's Dots on top of the TV. (Dots--you know, the really gross, flavorless, chewy round blobs that no adult with a palate would ever put in their mouth.) The boy completely forgot me, completely ignored my "Yoo-hoo, Luke . . . come and see where I'm hiding!" Left me standing in the kitchen by myself like an idiot. It's humiliating to be tossed aside for Dots.

I had to work hard to keep Luke playing with me. If it wasn't a sibling or a tater tot or a moth or a piece of cardboard with jagged edges or his reflection in the window, it was something else, some other tantilizing temptation.

As I see it, the only thing that separates adults from children (besides being taller and having all our permanent teeth) is our ability to resist temptation--most of the time, that is. Sure, I'm tempted to veer off the path now and again, too, but I've learned to stay focused. I've learned to stay on task. I mean, just because you have a thought or an impulse, doesn't mean you have to act on it.

Hey . . . I think we have ice cream . . .