Monday, November 5, 2012

Good stuff

On Saturday, for the first time in a long, long while, I took a nap. I put Ryan down for his nap and before I knew it, I was in la-la land myself. We didn't nap for long, just about an hour, but it was gloriously refreshing. Richard had a turn at a nap on Sunday, but both the littles were awake with me while he slumbered.

You can probably tell from the first paragraph that our weekend was not particularly interesting. When we were not at Ryan's classes, the soggy weather kept us indoors and sluggish.


I caught up on some reading and, as an exception to our screentime-ban, I let Ryan watch a Sesame Street video. We had a "negotiation" before that. He asked me if he could watch a video and, although I knew that he would accept it if I said no, I decided to give him something to process - I told him that he could but let's read two books first. He happily went to choose his books from the shelf and we spent some time leisurely reading through them. In fact, I think we read the third book at least five times - it was "Ten in the Bed" - and we had loads of fun. When we finished, I thought he had forgotten about the video but he looked at the small pile of books, looked very thoughtful and then told me very seriously, "I read THREE books, Mama". He didn't say anything else but the message was clear. And so, I had to uphold my end of the "bargain".

I should point out that it was not an exercise of earning a reward. I did not sell the reading to him as a task or a chore to be done to earn the privilege of watching a video.  I simply set out a "schedule" - first we do this, then we'll do that.


Rachel our babydoll has been making progress with her motor skills. She has moved from fiddling with her hands and fingers to fiddling with her feet and toes. She is reaching out to grab stuff and can transfer from one hand to another. She flips with ease from back to tummy to back again and can stay on her tummy with her head upright for longer and longer periods of time. In recent weeks, she has started to giggle - a delicious gurgly sound that rumbles up from her belly, the very essence of joy which I wish I could bottle up.

As for Richard and I, well, I think we are both tired. Physically and mentally tired. We joked about going away on a holiday without our littles. A holiday just to sleep. It would be really, really nice, to put it mildly. But we know we'll never do that. We'd miss the littles too much. Really miss them. And that's precisely the irony that is parenthood. No matter all the trouble or hassle or worry or stress that comes with children, there's always the good stuff and the good stuff always, always outweighs and makes you forget the bad.

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