Becoming A Person, not just a Kid

Jack has taken to a new form of interview. No longer does he want to just talk to me about whatever. As a matter of fact, he has never been one to tell you much about himself or what he thinks or what he has been doing. Suddenly, though, I have become very interesting to him, and it is a little disconcerting if you ask me.

Last night, we went to see a movie called Inglorious Basterds. He asks me what movie we are going to see. I tell him. We go. We return. We walk loops around the cul-de-sac.

"What happened in your movie, mommy?"

Ok, now, this is going to be hard to see where the problem lies unless you have seen the movie. But you've all seen SOME Quentin Tarantino movie, haven't you? Can you think of ANY scene from any of them that would be appropriate to relate to my five year old? I have already told him the inappropriate name for this movie. And I quite liked the movie, myself. But it is in all ways totally violent and nothing I can tell him about.

So, I tell him some part about a fire, some part about nicknames, some part about how the germans do the sign for three differently than Americans. He loves this and practices the three and says we can now go to Germany. Then he looks at me deeply and says, "Okay, mommy, just three more things about the movie. Please."

I am perplexed. Never has he cared so much about what I have to say, and I do want to indulge him, yet this topic is just SO wrong.

And then today, he had an 'incident' at school in which he got upset because he thought he was being punished for bad behavior when he was not. It was not a big deal at all, but he got upset, and so his teacher told me he was upset, and he heard her. We get into the car.

"I don't want to talk about that."

Well, ok. We drive.

"Please tell me some things. Not about when or why I was upset. Please tell me something else about you."

Now, this is even worse. What in the world am I going to tell him about what we did all day. Sam watched TV while I cleaned the house and surfed the internet? So I tell him about 18 kids and counting and something interesting that happened on that show, and how Sam took a long time to fall asleep, and when he asks me for one more thing, I tell him about a graduate school I read about on the internet. He seems satisfied enough. Then we walk in the door, and he says:

"Mommy, I see this laundry here. You did not tell me about this. You must have forgot."

These types of things don't last long with him. But, it does make me think that he is a big boy now capable of understanding big concepts. And worse, he LOVES to try to grasp these types of larger concepts. The problem is just, how will I keep coming up with stuff to tell him?

I think I am going to have to stay up late and look up stuff on howthingswork.com.

My "Official" Kindergartner

Jack came home with a sticker on that said he was an official Kindergartner, so I guess he is! He had a great first day of school. He was really excited when he woke up and he did great when I dropped him off. He was a little tentative, but he was sitting next to his good friend Abby from last year, so that made him feel much better! He took his lunch today (they eat at 10:30!) and had an afternoon snack. He said he even "fell asleep a little" during rest time.

When I picked him up he said he loved it and asked if he could "Please please please please go back to school tomorrow!" He also said Mrs. Zielke and Mrs. Keller were the best teachers ever in the whole wide world. I guess that is a rousing endorsement if there ever was one! I'm glad he likes it. Maybe I'll take some more pictures of him tomorrow in his PE uniform.

Fun in Texas

We did lots of fun stuff in Texas, but we didn't take many pictures of it ;-) Here is us at the zoo. Sam HATED feeding the birds and said he wanted to immediately "GO OUT!" But Jack really liked it!

Cute Little Golfers

We took these teenies to Putt Putt the other day and I was on "toddler duty" with Sam and his best bud, Lilly. They are some cute little ones, I must say.

Boys live here

Can you tell? I got such a laugh when I found this on my kitchen cabinet.

Who he is

Before I had kids, I was more of a believer in nurture. I sort of thought that kids turned out a certain way because of things that their parents did or did not do to make them that way. Now, I have to say that I think I believe mostly the opposite. Kids are who they are. Certainly, it seems, parenting can help or hurt. But I don't so much believe that I can make my kids into anything that they aren't already. And it isn't really my place. All I can do is to help them do the best with what they have.

Jack has always been what we consider to be strong-willed. But, he is also very bright and certainly very much in his own head. He will play by himself all day, happily, and never ask me to do something with him. He goes from building with blocks for an hour, to digging in the backyard, to art, to strumming on his fake guitar. He doesn't ever ask "What can I do?" or say "Mommy, I'm BOOOORED!" And this is the way he has always been. Even as a two year old, he would draw with crayons happily for an hour. I have friends that don't have kids like this, and have noticed and said we were lucky for it. And when I spend two hours cleaning and then look over and realize that he is still there and still doing the same activity that he was doing when I started, I even marvel at it myself. He is a chatterbox, but can sit quietly over a task for two hours, never speaking a word. This is remarkable at his age. I don't even do the same task well for two hours. So, I guess you have to take the challenges with the blessings, and realize that they are what they are, for better or for worse.

Summer is great, because it gives him this time to explore and do things his way. This whole single-minded focus is probably one of the reasons he is bright in the first place.

I think it is hard as a parent, or at least for me, to realize that I don't have as much control over him as I once thought I would. But also, it is a relief. He already is who he is. Thank heavens.

Beachin'

Okay... gotta give credit where credit is due here. These photos are taken by Sharon Masula at www.sharon.masula.com

I only wish I could take photos this cute ;-)