Sent to me by my sister. An article in The Atlantic about a fathering as a “lead parent”
Day Two Twenty Three
The other day we were driving in traffic and Luke said
“wouldn’t it be great if our new minivan had wings?”
I said yes indeed it would. Now the comment was not completely without warrant as I had also recently showed him information about the Terrafugia flying car which you can pre-order now for something like $200,000 with the approximate delivery date of 2025.
On the way home from our trip, Luke got increasingly excited and bolted out of the car and went straight to work on his wing assembly. His biggest concern is how to attach the wings to the minivan, to which his mom had to have a sidebar with me:
“I mean you will have a talk with Luke about the fact that we cannot REALLY attempt to attach his wings to our new car, right?”
It brought up an interesting thought process for me, because part of me would not be surprised to find Luke with a bunch of nails and screws and stuff trying to attach his wings to our car, but the other part of me, a stronger part of me to be honest, feels that he would never, that however it works his mind, he understands that he cannot follow through on his ideas.
The house he has been building for a few months is my case and point. Luke has said that our existing house is in the way of the one he intends to build and when he showed me the size of his new property, it was indeed going to involve removing our existing house to make room, but do I think Luke actually believes he will move our house, or do I fear that Luke will take a crowbar and start trying to remove floorboards, no I do not. It just the way his mind works, and works, and works.
Day Two Twenty Two
How incredibly emotional it is to take your child to kindergarten. All the cliches come ringing true. It truly feels like you are saying goodbye to a vast portion of Luke’s life, those lingering afternoons at home are gone forever. Of course most of this is a bit over the top, but I cannot but reflect upon a parent who recently was saying,
“Listen. Kindergarten, then homework, then their own friends, then high school, then college”
So it IS the end of a period of their life where they have been predominantly home-centric.
Luke’s kindergarten is a Waldorf based school, many kids that went to his pre-school went on to this exact school, we feel we could not be in better hands and that Luke continues to have a lovely, play centered environment to develop in. But BOY is he tired at the end of his day, but THAT is yet another blog post on…
The Continuing Adventures of Luke and Lily
Day Two Twenty One
Made a peach crisp for dessert.
Right after supper Luke turns on the oven light, looks at it and pronounces
“It’s done”
Really?
I looked and felt it needed a few more minutes and told Luke that.
He walked away saying:
“Have yours overdone if you want it that way!!”
(Shortly thereafter I removed the crisp, truth is he has had more experience making crisps with his mom than I have, and it was delicious!)
Day Two Twenty
There was a time way back when as Luke entered into a zone where he would “riff” as we say around here, on his own for what seemed like an eternity Quiet, expansive self created dramatic play. Incredible to watch, but sometimes hard to watch as the kids kinda like to have it be private and as soon as they know you are around or watching its back to business as usual.
“Mommy, Daddy?”
So, little Lil is in that zone and today she did a great job of showing me. Luke is back at school, yesterday was a short day, so today is really the first day in a while that Lily and I have had time to hang. She was clearly tired and asked for her “umma and unya” (bottle and pacifier and we headed into her crib and I gave her a blanket and some books and headed out.
About forty five minutes later I was wondering what the heck was going on in her room, so I snuck up and used my iphone in spie mode and took this picture.
Its almost the exact same position Luke would often fall into, a side saddle near sleep quiet internal play mode, absolutely delightful.
She didn’t see me, but lo and behold a few minutes later she just came walking out of her room, peacefully and re-joined Daddy for the rest of our afternoon.