Bee Bopping

When I was a kid I really wanted a nickname. Fortunately for me, Chicken Legs never really stuck past the 8th grade and underscored the wisdom of being careful what you wish for. Now, my friend Karen has a nickname that has stuck for over 30 years. When you can walk through the Portland Airport 20 years after high school and hear, "Hey Buckethead!" yelled across the concourse you know it's a winner. In fact, one time my son had to ask me if Aunt Bucky had a real name or if that was it...

Suzanne has a nickname--it is "The Bee." Grandma Della is chuckling right now because she knows exactly what this means. Suzanne buzzes most of her waking hours. She makes a circuit of whatever room she's in, peruses her play opportunities, moves the furniture when appropriate to get up to something more interesting, rearranges anything that is on her level, touches almost everything...she buzzes! Currently she is tossing wooden blocks into bins, an activity that she's been at for several minutes now. When she is focused on something, her attention span gets much loooonger. When all the blocks are in one bin, she claps and cheers for herself before moving them back.

This goes on all day, everyday. She even reads books with this kind of intensity. She will go to the red book bin, pick one out, sit and peruse it, toss it aside and go get another. She will go through the entire bin in this fashion and when directed, she will put the books back and clean up. She points out characters like Carl and George (Good Dog Carl and Curious George) to whoever is listening and tell the story as she goes along. She does this mainly in Russian (okay, it just sounds like Russian) so it takes a good ear to pick out the real words.

Moving, talking, talking moving--she BUZZES. Since I am the one who gets to follow her most of the time, I am so grateful that we only built the 2288 and not the 2962. That extra 600 square feet of house would kill me!