I am on my knees at the coffee table with a Winnie the Pooh coloring book. Naomi, my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter is supervising. There are exactly 547 colored pencils scattered on the table and on the carpet under the table. A very large box of sharpened Crayola crayons is open.

“Who’s that?” she asks.

Naomi points a lot when she asks questions. She hasn’t yet learned not to point when talking to strangers at the grocery store. If I pointed at your nose every time I asked a question, I would lose my pointer finger.

She’s pointing at the bouncy one.

“That’s Tigger.” I am an encyclopedia of Pooh information.

Wait a minute. That didn’t come out right. (clearing my throat) I meant that I know a lot about Pooh. No, that’s not right either. Let me try again. I know a lot about Winnie the Pooh and his friends who live in the Hundred Acre Woods.

I’m now wondering just how fitting it is to talk to children about Pooh and not be absolutely clear about the matter. They could get the wrong idea.

Anyway, she hands me a green crayon.

“Tigger is a tiger, and we need an orange crayon.”

She hands me a blue one. This is going to be a bit of a challenge.

Within five minutes, Naomi is flipping pages in a book with unicorns and rainbows. She’s holding a purple crayon in her left hand like a Navy Seal would hold a tactical knife, and she is making a purple blaze across every page that looks something like the mark of Zoro with a few extra swiggles and swags.

Meantime, Tigger is finished. I’m working on Piglet and Rabbit. All three are afloat in an upside-down umbrella, paddling through the cattails. Naomi is not impressed with my ability to stay inside the lines, and she slashes her purple sword across my masterpiece.

She grabs my neck, and we fall to the floor. The giggles are to die for.

I volunteered for this assignment weeks ago. I have wondered about my ability to run solo with a baby girl who has never spent the day at my house by herself before. She’s definitely a “daddy’s girl.” She and Brandon are nearly inseparable, and not always by his choice. But he’s a super dad.

I’m hoping I can be a super grandpa.

She got here about 8:30 this morning. We visited and talked in the kitchen for a few minutes. When the rest of them got ready to leave for the day, Naomi headed to the door with them.

“No, baby. You’re staying with Grandpa,” her mother says.

Naomi came over and stood by me, one arm wrapped around my left knee. Stuffed bear and blanket in hand, she waved good-bye and never shed a tear.

“I wanna play,” she said in two-year old mushed up slang.

This led to the crayons and mutilated purple Pooh pictures.

I have discovered that I am ill-prepared for a full-on fun day at Grandpa’s house. My toy collection is pathetic. I have coloring books. A few balls. Puzzles. And one plastic bright yellow and red garage with little plastic cars that go up and down the ramp. That’s it.

My little ride-a-horsey is broken because I fell on top of it a few months back. I was carrying a table with Brandon. We brought the big table from the porch inside the house for a family meal. I was walking backwards, clipped the horsey with my heel and went down like a sack of rocks. I had a horsehead shaped bruise on my backside for weeks.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put little horsey together again.

So, once the coloring was done, we resorted to sitting on the floor and rolling a ball back and forth. I noticed that she was better at floor sitting than me. Her legs spread out wide and flat to the carpet. Mine looked like crooked spider legs. There was nothing flat about the way I sat on the floor with my feet out in front of me.

I also found out, or more like remembered from a time past, that two-year-olds have no sense of direction when tossing a ball.

“Here, Grandpa. Catch!”

She wound up and let go a 95mph slider that took the crayon box off the coffee table and careened off the arm of the couch like a ricochet from John Wayne’s Colt 45.

“Get it, Grandpa.”

She is squealing with laughter. I am moving with the sleekness and speed of a walrus.

“I wanna snack,” she announced.

I put a big handful of Cheez-It crackers in a small Ziploc bag. I’ve never seen a child eat crackers so fast. She chased it with her water bottle.

“I wanna go outside,” she said. Big brown eyes and chunky cheeks.

“Let’s go for a ride,” I suggested.

She was unsure at first, but once I got her on the golf cart and went for a ride, she was hooked. She said “moo” to the neighbor’s cows. She sat in my lap and raised her hands when we went fast down the hills.

When we made the lap among the neighbors and got back to the house, she said, “Again.” I pushed the peddle and fired off up the hill.

“Bye house,” she said. “Bye barn.”

The only near catastrophic event was when she got brave enough that she wanted to sit on the seat beside me and not in my lap. A bug, just an innocent little bug, landed on her leg. You would have thought that she had been attacked by a Sabretooth Tiger. She teared up and grabbed me screaming.

On the next 75 laps down the driveway and back, she never left my lap.

I hate to admit it. I’m glad the bug got to her. I was enjoying the cuddle time. There’s just something about little ones that are related to you that tug at your heart.

We had lunch, which included more crackers. Nap-time came. I read her a book and hummed a lullaby. I tried to get up and leave the room, but she cried hard for a few seconds. So, I stayed and held her little hand until she fell asleep.

I’m reading. The house is quiet for a couple of hours. I can hear her talking to herself. I step into her bedroom to check on her and she hops up with a big smile.

Her first words: “Go ride.”

Thirty laps later we had supper together. Country fried steak. She picked out the butter beans.

It’s hard to know how she felt about hanging out with Grandpa. I think it went well. I wasn’t even all that tired. Mom and Dad showed up around 8:30 in the evening. Naomi and I had made a full day of it.

I know she won’t remember today. But I will.

They all piled into the car. Coming from the back seat, I heard the words that melt an old man’s heart.

“Good-bye Grandpa. Wuv you.”

And it didn’t hurt that she said it another dozen times.