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Two out of three ain't bad.

—

by

Jax Blunt
in

Well, usually anyway. But when two out of three refers to the number of my children I’ve made happy today, it’s left me feeling a little dissatisfied.

It’s easy to make Smallest happy. She was often sad this morning – she didn’t want to get in the car to go home, she didn’t want to sit on Angelina’s lap, then she did and we couldn’t find Angelina. She wanted to play on all the amusement style games, she didn’t want the Bob show to finish. But I could give her a ride on a carousel, and an airplane ride, and found a game that was win everytime and got her a practically luminous green caterpillar and she was a very happy child. Even managed to get her in the car without tears as she wanted to take Wormie (yes, I know) home to show Daddy.

And it turned out to be reasonably easy to make Big happy. I got her a go on a funbike. Or fun tricycle. And she is tall enough to go on the dodgems on her own, so that gave rise to much happiness too.

Small, however, is a very different kettle of fish. At that awkward height where he wasn’t big enough to go on any of the rides without an adult, and only accompanied by a heavily pregnant adult with a toddler, he didn’t get to go on anything but the carousel. Which didn’t really do it for him. And although his grabber wrapped around a Toad plush in the grab a toy game, it didn’t lift it up, and I wasn’t prepared to go on feeding pound coins into the machine in the hope it would suddenly work properly. (Is that how those machines work? That only so often they actually grab properly, regardless of how well they are positioned? Not impressed.) So he was disappointed again there. Something made him cry properly yesterday and I can’t even remember now what it was. I think it may have been the game he was playing on DS killing him off – that certainly upset him at some point over the weekend.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that he’s sad all the time. But it occurs to me that he’s rarely over the moon happy, and unlike the other two, I have no quick and easy solutions to handing him that moment of happiness. And I want to be able to. I want to get to the end of a day and know that I’ve made all of my children happy, even briefly, during that day.

Is that too much to ask?

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Comments

5 responses to “Two out of three ain't bad.”

  1. Mummygadgetgeek avatar
    Mummygadgetgeek

    I often feel the same about Bubby D. It was very easy to make Wee Man happy and giggly, but with Bubby D it’s a lot of hard work and I still haven’t managed proper giggles yet.
    My mum says she takes after me!

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      Small was easy when he was little – but he’s nearly 9 now, and complicated!

      Reply
  2. HHaricot avatar
    HHaricot

    one of my main small memories [apart from the empty bag moment] is him skipping with happiness at that wood fair having made his ugly mug. that made him v v happy x x

    Reply
  3. Sarah avatar
    Sarah

    Yes those grabbers are meant to work like that. They cover a toy and make you think you’re going to win, then don’t grip onto it properly at the last minute. A con through and through – I’m sure they are set up like that on purpose.
    One of my abiding memories as a teenager (when I had a 3yo and 1yo siblings) was going on a family holiday with my parents where I think it rained constantly, so we spent a lot of time in an arcade. My dad played one of those grabber games ‘just for fun’ and it actually grabbed the toy. We were so shocked that he did it again, and again – until my parents had a huge carrier bag full of soft toys, I kid you not!
    It became a standing joke as they used the soft toys as new baby presents for years afterwards …
    But no, unfortunately I think they are set up to disappoint children (and therefore lure unsuspecting parents into feeding them with more and more money).

    Reply
  4. TBird Anni avatar
    TBird Anni

    grabbers work fine, the problem is the small minded folk who fill the ***** machine and pack the toys in deliberately tightly (or with toys too heavy for the grabber) so that you mainly get fails until someone manages to work something lose by throwing far too much money in. The one at work gets filled like that by the company who maintain them, then the staff jimmy the lock, stir them all up and make it easy for the kids to win stuff!

    Reply

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