Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

Tre Pretending To Cry

My Dad has been down visiting for about 1 week now and surprisingly the kids haven’t broken him yet.  I think he’s close, but he’s still hanging in there.  It takes a special kind of person to be able to deal with the high energy output and shenanigans of my kids and so far he’s holding up to the task.   Keeping up with these kids is tough for me, so I can only imagine the burden that’s placed on an old fart like my Dad (let’s see if he reads this post).  He has given baths, been shot with Nerf bullets unexpectedly, and has cooked food only to have it thrown on the floor.  He’s been to numerous parks, participated in foot races, and played basketball & football for the first time in probably 30 years.  But none of these hardships compare to his greatest battle of conquering the heart of a little guy named Tre. For some reason, the boy has a love/hate relationship with my Dad.  Its so funny to watch and due to my Dad’s resilience it’s quickly turning into a love/love relationship.

The picture above shows Tre’s face when my Dad first arrived, you would think that my Dad had just given him a spanking or something, but no Tre was faking.  He would pretend like he didn’t want my Dad to talk to him and make the face above, but the minute my Dad went to talk to Fefe or Ty, Tre would say “uh oh” and try to get his attention.  Once the attention was directed back to him he would repeat the face and perform a very unconvincing fake cry.  This “rinse & repeat” rendition took place the entire trip from the airport, and once they got home it only got worse.  Tre would do things like run to my Dad only to run away crying.  We couldn’t figure out why he was doing this, it was so weird.  He’d bring a ball to my Dad and motion for him to take it, but then cry if he did.  If it was me, I would have given up and said screw this little kid, I’ll talk to him when he’s older.  But my Dad pushed on. 

After a few hours we noticed something very strange.  If Fefe and I were in another room, Tre had no problems with my Dad.  He would run over to him, sit in his lap, hand him toys and even hold conversations with him.  Fefe was the first to witness this, hiding and peeking her head out from the kitchen.  The two of them were laughing and having a good ole time so she decided to let her presence be known. When she did, Tre went into full actor mode;  I think the kid deserves an Oscar.  Once he saw that Fefe had witnessed him fraternizing with the enemy; he quickly looked at her, looked at my Dad, and then back at her again, and then the face from the picture began to form.  He started to fake cry, fell on the ground, quickly hopped up and ran to Fefe.  We all couldn’t help but laugh, come on little guy, you were just having a ball over there with Grandpappy and now you’re acting like he just tried to kidnap you. 

We’ve been teaching Ty the “Don’t talk to strangers” lessons for quite some time now; maybe Tre has picked up on those lessons and he thinks my Dad is a stranger.  Well if that is the case, then we have a bigger problem on our hands.  He’s openly defying the rules and once he gets caught, tries to act innocent and push the blame onto someone else.  Sounds like the American way doesn’t it? Maybe he’s just ahead of the game.

Tre has started to soften up a bit, yesterday when I came home the two of them were having a ball playing and Tre took the time out to acknowledge me, but then went right back to focusing on my Dad.  It felt good to see the two of them finally start to bond.