Owen loves being in his bed. This doesn't mean that he
sleeps the whole time he is there, but that he just loves being
ensconced in his crib. It is the only place he still gets his pacifier,
he has stuffed animals and blankets and he can just relax--I get it,
sounds nice to me at about 2 o'clock every day. Clara went in a week or
so ago to get him from his nap and he asked if he could stay. A few
weekends ago when Clara was at work I went upstairs toward the end of
his nap to read so I could hear him when he woke up. He woke up, but he
didn't fuss or bang on the walls like he does sometimes. I pressed my
ear to the door to hear him. He was practicing his vocabulary. "Mama,
mama, mama. Daddy, daddy, daddy. Ball, ball, ball. Yes, yes, yes. Mama.
Daddy. Yes."
He has also become quite the household helper.
He currently helps us with laundry, the dishes, cooking, sweeping,
vacuuming, feeding the chickens, taking out the trash, putting the
recycling into separate bins, and more things I am sure I am forgetting.
And here is the thing: he loves to help. Loves it. He and I were
building a tower with his blocks last night and Clara asked him if he
wanted to help her cook. "Stir!" he said and ditched his old man. He
redeemed himself by helping me grill the chicken and playing frisbee
with me while we waited.
With the change in seasons, he has fallen in love
with playing "upeball", which is his gentleman's effort at baseball. We
use a big air-filled bouncy ball and the attachment for the vacuum as
our bat. I alternately roll him the ball and he hits it (he says tennis
when it is on the ground) and upeball when I throw it in the air. He
likes to pitch as well and does his best imitation of my dramatized
windup. This is essentially a 360 degree spin while standing on one
foot. We were having problems getting him to hit off the rug in our
living room. He kept wanting to hit it off the wood floor. We got the
idea to tape a batter's box into the rug. Clara put the tape down while I
showed him a video of baseball players launching home runs all while
standing firmly in the batter's box. We went back to the living room and
showed him his box and he flipped out with excitement. Every time he
hit the ball he would run into the dining room where the computer is and
point to it: "Dad, I am hitting it just like those guys!"
There
are many more stories to tell. Words he is learning. Ideas. It is
amazing to watch him grow, so fun to see some new concept click in his
mind for the first time. To connect this, however tenuously, to my post a
couple of weeks ago on the declining birthrate in our country, I want
to say that raising kids is extraordinarily hard and challenging and a
monumental time suck, but it is liberating at the same time. I am no
longer the center of my universe. My son is. As will be my daughter here
in a few months. I read a writer once talking about how paralyzed she was in her twenties because of all the options open to her--career-wise, relationally, etc.--but now that she is in her thirties and married and locked into a career she feels more freedom despite the constriction. I feel that way with parenting. In the Donne poem I quote at the masthead of this blog, the old rogue tells God that unless he is bound he shall never be free. Life is like that in so many ways. Sometimes it takes steadfast commitment and the release of self to know who you really are and what really matters. My life is bound and restricted by my son, but it is also clarified and directed. I will provide for him. I will train him in the way that he should go. And that gives me direction, purpose, and focus. On top of that, it has increased my capacity to love and give. He, along with his mother and God's grace. is the greatest of gifts to my wandering soul.
