It's not actually a whole weekend, because Rod didn't leave until about three this afternoon and he'll be back tomorrow evening, but Jack knew he was leaving "for a couple of days" and it had an interesting effect on him.
From the time we woke up, Jack was "with" me in a way that I haven't experience much with him. It was the normal state of affairs with TJ and Corey -- I was the at-home parent, and then a single parent, and I was their focus when I was around. I've kind of missed that with Jack since I work in an office 40+ hours a week. Rod is always there, so in many senses he's Jack's "main" parent and I am the auxiliary.
That's not a bad thing, and I am happy that Rod is getting to experience that intense closeness that the primary parent has with his or her children -- and I only miss it occasionally because as sweet as that closeness is, it's also pretty intense. ;)
It was interesting that he latched on before Rod even left and has been a lot more attentive than he would normally be. He has not really spent any time playing on his own today, which he usually does. Still, I am enjoying this a lot.
So, by the time Rod left, Jack and I had already started having what Jack later proclaimed "a really good day". We cleaned the kitchen together, cleaned the parlour and put away his toys, we watered the garden and harvested. We made a lovely, large lunch to share with Dad before he left and then we ate. Jack was by my side and involved at every step -- it was delightful! (Oh, Dad was in on the harvesting, too -- and he was in and out of most of the activities before he left-- just like always.)
After Rod left, Jack and cleaned the kitchen again, wrote a letter to Grandma, and then sat down to piano practice. I am delighted to announce that I can now play (more or less) two-thirds of our first song. (Softly Row, if you're interested. ) It has involved many hours of watching the lesson over and over again, inventing my own system of notation to carry out to the piano, and then practicing, practicing, practicing while Jack noodles away on the other end of the keyboard.
So far he isn't showing a whole lot of interest in disciplining himself to just practice the song and I am certainly not pushing except to insist that no, he's not playing the piano he's noodling around with the piano. Different thing. I point out that some of his experiments are indeed pretty, but it will take discipline to learn to make the piano make the sounds he wants it to make and that is playing the piano.
Even so, as he noodles away, he amazingly often seems to get a few notes of the song right pretty much by accident.
After piano practice, we baked cookies. I thought we were making "Jack's cookies" -- a specific recipe he and Rod have developed over the years, but he informed me that this wasn't "Jack's cookies", it was some other kind of good cookies. Oh well. I discovered that all the recipes are missing from my hard drive, so we had to go with what we had. They turned out pretty well anyway.
The little guy has adjusted much better than I have to having Rod away for the night. We read two chapters of Wind in the Willows, and he was asleep before I got the book put away. I'm sitting here at 2:15 am. ;)
But I'd better get some sleep. We have another day to fill!
Yeah, I am conflicted about that book as well. My kids are morbidly fascinated by it. They find it to be very sad and yet you can see they are trying to rationalize the tree's givingness and the boy's neediness as a natural thing. I feel weird whenever I read it to them and we try to discuss it but it always seems awkward.
ReplyDeleteKim, you do realize that yiou have the option to make the book disappear until a more appropriate time, don't you? ;)
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