Quick Hitters

I. Independent Play
J has been reading a parenting book that, so far, she is finding funny and insightful. I recommended it to her without having read it myself, so I look forward to reading it once she's finished to find out how thoughtful and appropriate my recommendation was. She turned to me on the couch yesterday and said "You know, I really like what this book has to say about letting kids figure out how to play on their own. It's better for the child and the parent if the parent just lets the kids go off into their room and be alone with their imagination instead of feeling pressure to butt in and be a part of whatever the kid is doing."

I agreed with her sentiment, so I was more than happy to write up my Pretentious Taco blog earlier this afternoon without feeling too concerned about where James was. If he was enjoying some play time on his own upstairs, that was just fine. Owen was mostly playing by himself next to me, and I had everything written up in about 20 minutes while I finished off a cup of coffee. Once I was done I scooped Owen up and headed towards the stairs.

"Daddy? Daddy?"

The bathroom door was shut and I could faintly hear James calling as I got to the base of the stairs. I bounded up and opened the door, finding him stranded on the toilet with his pants down and the lights off.

"Oh NO, James...have you been here long?"
"Yeah. I'm kind of cold. Where were you?"

II. Ash Wednesday
"Ash Wednesday is the moment each year when we touch and hold together both our baptism at the beginning of life and our funeral at the end of life. From dust you came, and to dust you will return."
It was a beautiful service last night at GPC, all the more beautiful because there were just a few of us there in that dark, empty sanctuary on a snowy February night.

III. Traumatizing the Babysitter
When I got back from the service last night I asked the babysitter how the boys did.
"Oh, they were both fine. James wanted to play Monopoly, so we got that down and he and I played that until bedtime."
"Monopoly, huh? He's never played that before. Did he understand the rules and everything?"
"Yes...we modified it so that we just put up hotels and passed around money, we didn't play the real way."
"Well thanks for doing that with him. I'm sure he enjoyed it."
"Yeah, he said he wanted to play it with you guys tomorrow morning."
...the next morning...
I went into James' room at 7:30 or so, and the first words out of his mouth were: "Hey Daddy, can we get the Monopoly game down? I want to be the race car, and you can be the battleship, and Mommy should be the hat."
I said good morning back to him, helped him out of bed, and then went over to the closet where our box of Monopoly had sat buried under a stack of other games ever since we moved in. I asked him if he'd had fun playing with the babysitter last night, and he assured me that Monopoly was his new favorite game.
I was interested in getting the game out again...our version of Monopoly was a custom board built by my brothers for us as a Christmas gift one year that was re-christened Smithopoly and featured properties where we had lived and Chance and Community Chest cards that had to do with our musical lives, hobbies, interests, etc. It was a great present and deserved to be opened again.
We went downstairs, and I opened up the box. I started sorting out the money and separating out the different types of Chance and Community Chest cards.

And then I remembered.

I remembered about the set of handwritten custom Chance and Community chest cards that were in the box. Cards that were not appropriate for ages 5 and up. Cards that were created sometime when we were living in Greensboro and were only ever supposed to be seen by J and I...

...and hence, for the second blog in a row, I'm concerned about our status with babysitters, because I'm not sure that we're ever getting that sitter back again.