My regular readers -- all two of you -- will recall that my usual cover story for playing with my toy airplanes is to have some kid over for dinner, whom I can then teach how to play with it.

But some days, I'm left to admire the toy alone, right. 

They say the difference between the men and the boys is the price of their toys, but, really, these toy helicopters are not that expensive.  Maybe $39 at Radio Shack.

So I really should feel free to play with them whether I have a kid around as a cover story or not.

But work does interfere with my fun most days.

Today, however, I took the day off, and it being a slow-news day, got Becky to video me playing with the thing again.

And, naturally, now that I got the video uploaded to Facebook, I'm sharing it here:

 

What does an old guy do with an almost-4-year old?  Heck if I know, but I had to think of something yesterday.  This young couple with 3 little kids -- 2, almost 4, and almost 6, stay with us occasionally.  They're kinda between houses.  It's a long story too long to blog here.

Anyway, the dad was at work, and the 6 year old was invited out with another family, and the mom was upstairs with the 2 year old -- which left me downstairs to entertain the 4-year old.  After he asked me how the dishwasher worked, and I decided he was a budding engineer, I thought maybe, just maybe, he might be old enough to fly one of my toy helicopters.  I think the minimum age is 5 or 6, which explains why I do it so well. 

Anyway, here I am with little Jackson, left, and one of the toy helicopters. 

The kid was a natural.  I couldn't believe it.  He'll probably klep out of engineering school. 

He had sense enough to notice that I had just the right touch and he didn't, so he actually suggested that I guide his thumb on the control so he could feel exactly how I did it.  Once I showed him, he picked it up right away.  Wonders never cease, even for an old guy. 

When his dad got off work and his brother got home, he had to show them how to do it, and here they are, below right.

I thought -- a little child shall lead them.

I usually teach the dad, and let the dad show the biggest kid, and then have the biggest kid teach the next younger one, and so on. 

But this time, it was the other way around.  Even old guys have to be flexible.

I got some video footage of them flying it, and here it is:

Saturday we spent most of the day getting Grandson D.J. a stroller, putting it together and trying it out.

But first, here's a cute picture of him at breakfast, left, sitting in my children's high chair, which of course means it's over 35 years old. 

Kiersten had the stroller she wanted all picked out, having researched everything ever written on the internet about strollers.

The one she chose does not wipe his nose or feed him a bottle, but it does do just about everything else.

Her main requirements were:  big wheels for rough terrain and ease of folding so she could put it into her car trunk.

This of course meant she wanted to practice putting the floor sample into her trunk before she bought one.  Most places, that's called shoplifting.  I would tell you how we managed to get that floor sample out into the parking lot and into her trunk, but I think instead I would like to exercise my right to remain silent and not incriminate myself. 

Here Kiersten is, right, trying to implement the "fold with only one hand" feature. 

As you can see, she had to use both hands.  Partly because, we now can say based on experience -- the floor sample had not been assembled properly.  They probably didn't read the instructions.

Which is a mistake we did not make after we got ours home.  I say "we," but as a typical male, I don't read instructions.  That is women's work.  Division of labor.  That is because, I explained to Kiersten, women are better at multi-tasking.

Here she is reading the instructions to me, left.  She felt men were better at multi-tasking, since they were hunters, foraging for food.  I tried to explain, no, that was one thing only -- hunting and foraging for food is one and the same thing.  She didn't get it.  So I had to get Becky to resolve the argument.  Becky agreed with me that women are better at multi-tasking.  Of course she did.  Otherwise, I would not be telling this, would I?  What is the world coming to -- with 30-somethings not understanding the differences between the sexes better than that?  I give up. 

No:  raising a baby, going to college, and holding down a full-time job -- now that's multi-tasking, and that's what my daughter does.  No way I'm gonna do that, or ever did that. 

After we finished putting the stroller together, I offered my hand and said, "Congratulations, pardner." 

She, right, said, "I've got snot on my hands."

I said something I think only a father could say, "I've had your snot on me before."

She laughed, as you can see.  If you can't -- maybe it was one of those moments when you had to be there. 

The baby was asleep through all this adventure, left.  But we did eventually let him ride in his stroller, I promise. 

Here he is, right, giving his mama a happy smile after his first ride. 

And now, for the rest of the story, you will just have to watch the video of these adventures that I uploaded to Facebook -- that's all there is to it: