It is just going to be me and my son for Thanksgiving this year. Thanksgiving is not that far away. My wife is jetting off to Norway for her sister's wedding and has decided to take the Girl Child with her. I am more than a little disappointed. I had thought it was going to be just me and the kids all by ourselves for four days and I was delighted. I love having the kids to myself and I am surprised to discover that I am really going to miss having my daughter around. So much so that I want to tell my wife not to take her. But I'm not going to do that.
Instead, I'm focusing on how much fun it will be to have the Boy Child all to myself for four days. I don't really know him as well as I do the Girl Child or as well as I ought to and this should prove to be a golden opportunity to get to know him a bit better. I have not yet formulated any plans or come up with any activities for us to do, but I certainly want to do something fun just for him. Maybe I'll take him to a children's museum or something like that. I hope we both have a good time together. He's only 20 months and really doesn't talk at all yet beyond 2 or 3 words. That can cut down on the possibility of long chats, you see. Still, all in all, this will give him a lot of 100% attention, the kind of attention he can't quite get when the Girl Child is up and running around as she demands quite a lot of attention.
I remember, hazily, last Thanksgiving. We were about to start a trial. I was working around the clock and took that Thursday off. I took the Girl Child to the park to play. We were the only ones there. It was deeply satisfying to be there with her.
The Girl Child is not taking my work schedule (weekends, early mornings, late nights) very well. She keeps asking me when I am going to be taking care of her again. It makes me very sad. I am torn. If circumstances permitted, I'd like to stay home and take care of her full time. I am a reluctant lawyer these days.
Posted by Random Penseur at November 9, 2004 01:55 PMIt's difficult finding time, my little guy is 2, and luckily I have weekends off, so I take care of him while my wife works at a nearby flea market. On weekends that I have gigs though, that can be almost too much, I get home around 3 am, then have to get up at around 9 with him, take care of him all day and still try and get something accomplished. Maybe the latter is my mistake, maybe I have to just accept that nothing gets done with a 2 year old running around.
Posted by: Oorgo at November 9, 2004 03:40 PMThat's the biggest downer to being employed again. Damn do I miss the family. It was absolutely wonderful to be around them non-stop.
I've decided that it's a moral imperative to become independently wealthy.
Posted by: Jim at November 9, 2004 04:12 PMDo any of your science museums up there have the giant sandroom where the kids can dig for "fossils"? My boys loved doing that at that age. The interactive exhibits with soap-bubble blowing, dam-building, and block-erecting were also big hits.
Having parented boys and a girl through those years, the girl has been much more chatty than the boys (surprise). I can still sit for hours with my sons building Legos and not talking much about anything other than what pieces we're looking for and where they go.
But playing dollhouse (or Legos, or horses, or whatever) with my daughter for even a short period of time leads to a lengthy narrative of the characters involved, their motivations, wants, and feelings.
Oorgo -- you're right. Very little gets done with a 2 year old around but what does get done is often messy and fun.
Jim -- include me on your plan, please.
John -- great suggestions about science museum. And I think you're right about the differences between boys and girls. My kids' ped. explains it as follows: Give a girl a bar of soap and she'll tell you a story about it, about where it came from and what it is doing and how many sisters it has, etc. Give the same bar of soap to a boy and he'll look at it for a second and then say, VROOOOM.
Posted by: RP at November 9, 2004 04:30 PM