How Green Becomes Wood

"Newts?" Claire repeated, "Like the lizards?" They were salamanders, actually, but taxonomy wasn't her strong suit.

Ivy frowned at him, and turned back to the lock, sliding it around and trying to figure out how it worked. Xander's answer was wholly unsatisfactory.
 
"Something like that, yeah," Alec said, not knowing anything more about them than Claire did. "I just think it's unique. I'm totally up for doing mini golf, too! Which would you rather do first?"

Xander snickered. "Alright, but Mama and Baba aren't going to be happy if you figure out the locks. What happened to your [flower]?"

[Can't remember the Arabic word.]
 
"We can do the scavenger hunt!" Claire said, "It sounds like a lot of fun, and anyway I love the park. Flowers are usually blooming this time of year."

Ivy didn't know and didn't care, once she had moved on from it, it stopped mattering to her. Toddlers were fickle that way, and unfortunately her parents bought and made her so many puzzles, she seemed to treat this lock the same way.
 
"That's true! And flowers are beautiful to see in the wild. Well, as wild as a city park gets, but I think you know what I mean," Alec chuckled.

Xander sat down in the nearest chair to watch her. "On the one hand, I should probably stop or distract you in some way," he mused. "On the other hand, you're getting a good brain challenge. It'd be a shame to stunt you mental growth. Plus, I'll be honestly impressed if you get this lock open."
 
"I do," Claire replied, rolling onto her back and holding Beryl on her chest, "Do you want to go next week?"

One thing was certain, Ivy really worked to try to solve a problem instead of giving up when it wasn't immediately solvable. There were moving parts, that was easy enough to figure out, but her little fingers and young mind was struggling to figure out exactly how to get them to work in order. Still, it had captured every once of her young attention.
 
"Absolutely. That sounds like a great idea!" Alec agreed with a smile. "Actually, I have next Saturday off of work, so we can spend as long as we want searching." He hugged Geisel gently as he settled back on his bed. "We could start in the morning and get either brunch or lunch when we finish, depending on how long it takes. Would that work for you?"

After a moment, Xander shrugged and settled back in his chair to watch. "Eh, I'm going to see where this goes. Serves your parents right for starting you off so young with hard puzzles." His own puzzle-solving skills had spiked since trying out Dark's many puzzles, and those were his favorite. He never said so to Dark, that they were his favorite, but if Dark was watching, it'd be easy enough to see. Xander would stop mid-puzzle on anything else if given a Dark Puzzle.
 
"Maybe we could start in the early afternoon?" Claire suggested, "I hate waking up before ten if I can help it."

Suddenly, all at once she got something to click, and she shrieked in delight, without even looking back at Xander to see if he was watching. Although she hadn't solved it yet, she had made it do something new.
 
Alec laughed. "That's fair! Alright. How about we meet for an early lunch and go from there? Or, if you don't want to be wandering around on a full stomach, we can get a snack after."

"Look at that. You're getting the 'No Mini' to do something," Xander said in a fully neutral tone.
 
"Going to lunch first sounds lovely," Claire told him. There was no way she'd admit it to the boy she was crazy about, but her sister and Sloan both said she could get grumpy when she was angry, "Otherwise, if we get hungry looking for newts we may just give up, and that would be terrible."

Ivy mumbled and pulled at the cabinet door. Having loosened the lock, she was able to get it open more than she ever had been able to before, and she quickly realized it meant she could get her hand inside.
 
"That's a great idea! I wouldn't want to stop halfway through just because of hunger," Alec agreed, grinning. He told her about a few of the places near the park where they could get food, idly playing with his bear as he asked her opinion on where they should eat.

"Hey, no, Mini, don't stick your hand in there," Xander warned her sternly. "That will make a owie. No hands."
 
"If there are so many places near us, we can see how we're feeling on the day?" Claire suggested, "Be spontaneous, you know?"

Ivy whipped her little hand around and glared at Xander, defiantly keeping her hand inside the cabinet, trying to grab at anything she could.
 
"Oooo, spontaneous! I like it," Alec said, drawing out the word "spontaneous," and making it sound a little funny just for fun. "We can do that."

"Wow," Xander drawled. "If that's how you're going to play it..." He leaned forward and grabbed her by the back of her clothes, gently but easily pulling her back and away from the cabinet. "You're going to have to learn through pain at some point, but I'd rather it wasn't right now." He used his booted foot to push the door of the cabinet closed and let it rest against the door. It was a bit of a stretch, but he could manage. He was fully prepared for screaming.
 
Laughing at his joke, Claire said, "It's perfect, I can't wait."

And scream she did. Her little face turned pink, and then red, and she scrunched her eyes so tightly they nearly disappeared. All she wanted was to get into the cabinet! It wasn't fair!

Obviously, in the kitchen Daizi heard her daughter scream, but she was at a step in their dinner preparations where she couldn't immediately step away, so all she could do in that moment was ask, in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din, "What happened?"
 
"Neither can I," Alec admitted. He knew he should hang up now. They'd concluded their business, as it were, so it was time to end the conversation. Did he have to? Just yet? He cast his mind about for something else they could talk about.

"She's fine. She got told no to sticking her hand in a partially open cabinet," Xander said, wincing at the decibels Ivy was reaching, but not feeling bad in any way. "I didn't want her leaning on the door and accidentally squishing her own hand."
 
Claire gladly continued to chat happily with Alec for as long as he would stay on the phone. She was vaguely sure she heard something almost like screaming in the background but guessed it was probably fine since Alec didn't seem bothered.

Daizi sighed in the deep, tired way only parents of toddlers can. "Ivy-Qadira," She called from the kitchen, "Mama knows you're really mad because you couldn't go into the cabinet. It's really frustrating when you can't explore someplace new, but it's not safe. Would you like your play tub or to read a book?" Ivy stopped screaming slightly when she heard her mom's voice, but since she was in a different room, it didn't ultimately help to regulate her.
 
Alec heard Ivy screaming, but he was able to recognize with a reasonable degree of accuracy when it was pain or when it was anger, and she sounded angry, so he wasn't too worried.

Xander just shrugged and waited for further instructions. What was wrong with letting her scream it out because she was mad she couldn't do something she was expressly told she couldn't do? She was completely safe. She could see she wasn't being ignored or abandoned, and he wasn't telling her she couldn't be frustrated (the old, "keep crying and I'll give you something to cry about" routine was one he was familiar with and despised), so, let her vent her frustrations as a one-year-old. Eventually, she'd have to find out that sometimes being told no was for her own safety - like accidentally getting her hand caught in a door - but for now, she'd have to deal with the idea that some things were just... no. But it wasn't his kid, and it wasn't his job to try to parent her. So, unless Daizi gave him some directions in what she wanted, he was fine sitting and waiting Ivy out. It wasn't like Daizi's parenting was bad or anything, just not what came naturally to Xander, so he just did what he was told.
 
"I know, you have really big feelings," Daizi said empathetically. Truthfully, she was trying to think through how to tell Xander how to help with it, but he couldn't touch her to try to distract her that way, and she knew helping to name the feelings was really pointless now. It was all about the groundwork right now, so eventually she would know the names of what she was feeling. Sometimes they'd toss a blanket over her to surprise her out of it, but she could tell by the pitch of Ivy's voice that it would not help this time. He could maybe gently touch her with a blanket? Or one of her soft toys? Finally, she just said, "Xander, can you come stir this? It needs to be stirred continuously until it thickens."
 
"Now that I can do," Xander said, relieved to be given a task, a direct order. He stood and hobbled into the kitchen, leaning on furniture and walls as he went instead of bothering with crutches or canes. "She's trying and almost succeeding in figuring out the lock on the movie cabinet."
 
"Oh no," Daizi said, passing the spoon over, "She is too clever for her own good."

Ivy, meanwhile, realized she was very briefly not being watched, and therefore immediately went to try getting back into the cabinet. The sudden cessation of screams, Daizi hustled like there was a fire to the living room to interrupt what could only be mischief.
 
"I wonder where she got her clever, mischievous side from," Xander remarked with a smirk as he took over stirring. Nope. He was never going to be a parent. With his better role models being his current parents, if he held up his vague ideas of how to parent next to their's, he was a miserable failure. He knew he had a lot of growing up to do before parenting even became a potential factor, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to follow their example. Quite frankly, he didn't want to. Not because he thought what they were doing was wrong, but because he just didn't "get it," and couldn't be bothered to try.
 
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