One of the most common articles of parenting wisdom I see expounded on internet pseudo-news sites, Facebook, and by semi-acquaintances is to enjoy the stage at which your children desperately want to play with you, because it runs out all too soon. I don't remember when going outside to throw the football around with my Dad ceased to be the high point of my afternoon, but I am trying to savor James' constant requests to join him for playtime. Most often this involves standing up (if I'm sitting down), getting down on the floor (if I'm standing up), going upstairs (if I'm downstairs) or going downstairs (if I'm upstairs.) Here's what he likes to do:
The marble run is in the right order!
That actually means that the marble run is in the wrong order, and we need to take it apart and put it together again from scratch. Whenever we start he insists that we need to build the one that's on the box. (I threw the box away months ago, but he can still tell you exactly which color feet connect to which which chutes, and he gets deeply upset if you start with a different base.) He doesn't remember quite so well what happens above that, and he's willing to experiment, so long as he has creative input.
Let's do running!
This is exactly what it sounds like. He pushes his cart all throughout the downstairs at top speed while I hold Owen and jog behind him. (It's very important that Owen comes along. He needs to wake up if he happens to be sleeping at the moment.) He crashes into furniture and toys with reckless abandon and will occasionally stop at one end of the house long enough to point and shout "Catch that monkey!" before darting off again. He and Alexa are experts at this game, so I am, at the very best moments, a sort of substitute for his real running partner. But it isn't a bad game.
Coloring
We only really color two books together, and they are two copies of the exact same Curious George coloring book. Also, the only two colors we really need are yellow and brown. I color the Man with the Yellow Hat, and James colors Curious George. If it's an extra special picture I'm sometimes asked to help put some red, peach, and black color on George as well. But mostly James wants to handle the bronw.
Want to build a carwash?
Carwashes can be constructed out of just about anything, but our favorite media are waffle blocks, mega-blocks, duplos, and the wooden blocks that Grandpa Davis made for Christmas. We also occasionally make houses (complete with garage doors and scary vacuum cleaners) with the wooden blocks, but the basic domestic unit of James' imaginary world is the carwash. There might be structures for human habitation and sleep once every few blocks, but his imaginary world would definitely be mostly dedicated to keeping vehicles clean.
Want to play legos?
Just like the marble run, the most important part of playing legos is building EXACTLY what's on the box. That means that we must copy every detail precisely from the image on the front of the lego box, matching every color of every block correctly and proportioning the house to the correct dimensions. More than once I've had to make a trip out into the garage or the driveway to excavate missing pieces from a carseat so that we can complete a lego masterpiece.
Want to do a puzzle?
Puzzles are currently James' favorite naptime stall tactic. I think he knows that most of his puzzles have some sort of marginal educational value, so we're reluctant to put him down when he could be working on numbers or ABCs. He knows his numbers and his ABCs just fine of course, but he enjoys the process of sorting all the puzzle pieces by size, color, etc. He also has a bit of a performer in him, and puts on a good show of searching in great confusion for "the perfect piece" and then finding it with a flourish. This is why it's important that we do puzzles together.
Hopping
Hopping is the best game to include Owen. It's exactly what it sounds like. I hold Owen under his armpits and let him hop about. Sometimes he hops to toys on the floor ("Good job Owen, you found it!") and sometimes he hops over to James, and sometimes he hops up the stairs. This is the most surefire way to get both boys laughing at each other, and that's about the most beautiful sound in the world at the moment.
Baseball
Yes, we let James play baseball in the house. He hasn't broken anything yet. Most of the fun for him is running around the bases, which he sets up in the living room. He'll scoot around first, second, and third, and then it's very important for someone to tag him a split second after he slides (he always slides) into home plate and declare him safe. The baseball can be tossed underhand or rolled, but NOT thrown overhand.
Basketball
Okay, maybe J and I play this more than he does. His hoop is kind of small, and it's really hard to bank the ball in from a sitting position on the couch. James was on more of a basketball kick when he had just attended a game at RWC.
Cars
He's also rediscovered Hot Wheels recently, and the little ramp/jump that we bought him over a year ago. We don't know where the jump part of it ended up, but he's enjoyed attaching the track to a chair, dragging that into the living room, and then racing his collection of cars down to terrific crashes at the bottom over and over again. (Especially the red car. Boys love red cars.) We did a lot of this today and my new iPhone made it more fun. Slow motion video makes Hot Wheels crashes pretty explosive.
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