Hide and Go Nuts

As I've mentioned before, often after school Kiernan wants to run around and play with his friends on the enclosed front lawn of the school. Since his love of the Planet Heroes is dominating his life right now, this is no longer a daily thing. He often insists that a couple of the Planet Heroes greet him after school. For awhile Earth Ace would be waiting for him inside the car, balanced on the steering wheel. Last week I put Gustus (Jupiter) on top of the car. Now when I pick him up he cannot wait to see which hero is on top of the car, at which point he immediately wants to leave so we can drive home (or do errands) and he can converse with his new little plastic friends.

The thing is, I really love watching Kiernan run around with his non-plastic friends after school. Some days that's just what I need, to see him run about with them with such abandon. Some days they all want to chase me around, and that's good too. Not always, but most days it is. Today I was in the mood to get him to socialize and play a bit with his friends. He's going through an odd phase right now, testing his boundaries as kids will, and I wanted to observe him with them. Also give him a little more time with his peers.

So when he came outside after school and saw Earth Ace on top of the car with Venus Dazzle, and he said he wanted to get going right then, I encouraged him to sit down with his friends for a little snacking and then play a bit. He went for it. I hustled over to the car to get his pretzels and the bottle of water I had brought along [in lieu of the getting-to-be-too-ubiquitous juice cup] and he chilled with his friends for a bit.

One of the cool things about this impromptu gathering is the sharing. Parents bring snacks for their kids and generally bring a little extra. The kids share their snacks with each other. One mom is particularly good at this, particularly generous. This is Rosie, mother of twins Nicholas and Veronica. She always brings enough food for everybody to have some, and often even brings extra juice boxes. She is my role model.

After snacking Kiernan and his friends set about playing. On this day they played a bit of hide and seek, a bit of Firecats*, and a whole lot of running around with wild abandon. Often these activities were combined. The top and bottom pictures of this post show Kiernan in his role of 'IT' in hide and seek. I have yet to figure out the exact rules of hide and seek as Kiernan and his school friends play it. The 'IT' child counts, as you see Kiernan doing in the top picture. Once he reaches, well, whatever number he feels like reaching [I think], he rushes off to find his friends. This might entail actually finding some of them, then yelling at them as they yell at him, then running away. Or it might entail running around with total abandon and then going to hide in the bushes. The kids who have not been found end up running around too and then another kid somehow magically becomes 'IT' and starts counting.

I cannot discern the rules, but the kids work it out for the most part. And they seem to have a blast. Eventually it always seems to devolve into running around in circles and pushing each other down until someone inevitably gets hurt and starts crying [this is usually a child] and we all extricate ourselves from the situation.

The parents stand around and talk about parent stuff and act as referees. Today's parent conversation was about sleeping. When does your kid go to sleep? When do you? How many hours do you typically get? That kind of thing. To avoid being pegged as [more of] a freak I stayed on the periphery of this conversation.



*Firecats will be covered more extensively in a post to come.