Family Life

Debbie took Joel grocery shopping today, while I stayed home with Daniel and Micah. Micah was in bed having a nap, so I was essentially alone with Daniel. He had me all to himself, a rare occurrence. Joel and Micah are very demanding of my attention, while Daniel is the most self-sufficient of the three boys. Thus, on the whole I think I spend more time with the younger two than I do with Daniel. This state of affairs doesn’t seem to bother him at all, but he enjoyed the time one-on-one all the same. It also helped that I didn’t have anything pressing to attend to, so I was more relaxed about it. In contrast, Debbie has to give the boys her full attention every day while simultaneously completing a multitude of tasks and holding her sanity together. But that’s another story. She’s an amazing woman.

I couldn’t tell you what we played. Lego was involved, and no doubt there was running and jumping in there somewhere. Most of the time my brain is disengaged while I play with the boys, ticking over in neutral, not stimulated by anything we do or say. Kid’s conversations and activities at this age are basic and very repetitive. That’s appropriate for developing language and motor skills, but it doesn’t lead to fascinating activities. I’m aware of that, and use every opportunity to introduce or reinforce some basic skill, to expand vocabulary. It’s not wasted time. But often it’s a little lacking in adult interests.

Daniel surprised me today, though, by reading me one of his library books, start to finish. He’s done that before, but this was the first time my attention was focused. Normally I’m distracted by the younger two clambering all over me while Daniel reads. As he read he occasionally stumbled over an unfamiliar word, but on the whole the experience was fluid, modulated, continuous, interesting. It was a story. He liked the story. He liked reading it. And he liked reading it to me. He loves reading books.

Daniel just turned four. He starts kindergarten in September. He’s turning out just like his parents, the poor child.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 11:15 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.