As adults, we pay lip service to seeing the world through kids’ curious, unjaded eyes. But even better in our opinion is that being with children also means you actually get to be a kid sometimes! If you need a reminder of how ridiculously fun (and just ridiculous), grandparenting, can be, we came up with a list of why spending time with kids is a blast.
1. Riding carousels...and putting genuine thought into which pony you should pick when you’re 70!
2. Trick or treating at Halloween, and the vicarious thrill of wondering who will open the door and what kind of candy they will give (fingers crossed for the top-shelf Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!).
3. Sucking the helium out of balloons and then singing “Happy Birthday” in your leprechaun voice.
4. Skipping! (We think skipping should be the next fitness craze…it’s quite the leg workout.)
5. Chasing after the ice cream truck.
6. Water gun/balloon fights. Why do we stop having these once we grow up?
7. Playing Candyland and, after all these years, still getting excited when you land on Queen Frostine.
8. Having an excuse to see all the latest animated kids’ movies.
9. Family sing-alongs in the car, windows down, headed home from dinner.
10. Running through a sprinkler to show the children how it’s done.
11. Having a backyard game of catch.
12. Finger painting.
13. Chuckling at your ignorance of today’s slang— who knew “jello” or “jelly” means “jealous”?
14. Loving to hate Elmo, SpongeBob, and Phineas and Ferb.
15. Enjoying the sidelines camaraderie of fellow sports parents at your grandkids’ games. It beats chitchatting at a grown-up cocktail party any day.
16. Winding down from preschool—and work—with coloring books, and choosing just the right crayon for Thor’s chest plate (pink, of course).
17. Spending way too much money at a video arcade—on Skee-Ball, Big Buck Hunter, and free throw basketball—because it’s just as thrilling for you as it is for the kiddos to see the machines spit out those long chains of tickets.
18. Swinging at the playground, with your grandbaby on your lap, looking up at the sky.
