It's the little things: potatoes and sand

As we drove back last night after spending 5 days at their grandmother's house for Passover, my husband asked the girls what their favorite part of our stay was. This was a big question for our 2.75 year olds. They had spent each of the five days in a house with eleven relatives, including their well-loved, older cousins. Their grandmother had hosted two seder dinners for 27 people. The girls had entertained them all with their renditions of the first of the Four Questions that are traditionally asked in song by the youngest seder participants. They had been allowed to stay up well past their standard 7 pm bedtime two nights in a row. There had been see-saw building, new playgrounds, hand-cranked ice cream, and even new hand-me-down cars to ride on.

But the girls had little trouble with the question. Hannah responded with, "Eating potatoes with salt." She had so enjoyed eating the small piece of potato ritually dipped in salt water as part of the seder, that my husband had run around the room swiping unattended potatoes for her. Ma'ayan said, "Putting my feet in the sand and the water and saying, 'That's cold!!'" When we went with her cousins to the beach and boardwalk, she had headed straight for the water. While others were distracted by flashier sights, she and I took off our shoes and socks to experiment.

It strikes me that they each chose a simple sensory experience shared with a parent. We go to many lengths to entertain, educate, and love them, but it doesn't really take much at all. Definitely predictable, but surprising all the same.