The Small Family     

Unfortunately, I don’t really have many adventures to talk about this week! Theo has been sick for a few days, so that has kept us close to home. Chris had to work on a freelance project all day Saturday and then went to San Jose on Sunday/Monday to watch the Super Bowl with his dad (and stay overnight to avoid all the drunks on the road after the game), so Theo and I just puttered around Roseville.

But this puttering led to a reminder of how proud I am of our little boy’s tremendously beautiful spirit. Let me explain…

There are three things I want for Theo in life: that he be happy, that he be kind, and that he grow up to be a productive member of society. I don’t care what he grows up to be, as long as he makes his way in the world and provides for himself and any family he chooses to have. He can choose to be a doctor, a policeman, a waiter, a park ranger, a teacher, a sanitation worker…it doesn’t matter to me, as long as he makes his way in the world. I don’t care what he does to make himself happy, as long as it doesn’t hurt him or anyone else. If skydiving makes him happy, then I hope he does it (even though I’ll probably have a heart attack and die on the spot). If having a big family makes him happy, great. If having no family makes him happy, great. You get the idea--I can’t (nor do I want to) control how he goes about being productive and being happy; I just hope he does it.

Nor can I control whether he is kind--but because we are an integral part of helping to shape who he is at this point, it’s definitely something we stress. We try to teach him to kind to all and to be generous and share. But our teaching can go only so far--part of kindness comes from a person’s inherent nature, I think, as well as what he is exposed to from people other than his parents. And let’s face it--the sharing part of kindness doesn’t come easy to any toddler! The Toddler Law states that “any item I see or want is mine,” after all. ;-)

So I was pretty much bursting with pride Saturday morning, as I watched Theo interact with some kids and saw the beautiful kindness in his spirit. Theo was still sick on Saturday (that is, he still had a fever), but he was back to his normal self in terms of energy level. All morning he kept saying, “Feo want go somepwace fun!” So I finally decided I’d take him to the park, as he probably wasn’t likely to get any other kids sick if they were all just playing outside. The park we went to has some buttons you can push to make different animal sounds, and at one point, Theo was inside the “fallen log” structure, wanting to push the button to make the owls hoot. But there were three little girls in there who weren’t about to let him touch the button. They weren’t touching it, but they were quite adamant that he wasn’t allowed to, either.

Let me take a moment here to say that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. I have learned something in watching Theo play with lots and lots of little boys and girls: Girls tend to have a lot of rules, and they can be pretty persnickety about letting others play “with” them. Please don’t get me wrong--I’m not trying to cast aspersions on girls here. I know many very nice little girls, and there are certainly exceptions to any rule. If I ever have a daughter, I have no doubt that I’ll love and appreciate many traits of little girls, just as I do many traits of little boys. But I’m not sure I’ll ever come to love and appreciate the sort of “I’m the princess/queen/fairy/etc., so you have to do what I tell you, and I say you can’t touch that!” attitude. Nevertheless, I’m a firm believer in working with a child’s inborn characteristics, rather than trying to squash them down and force a child into a mold that doesn’t fit, so if I ever have an “I’m the princess!” daughter, I will just try to help her channel that into an “I’m the princess, and I say that everyone is included!” attitude. (Can you tell I was a bit of an outcast as a kid? I had a few really good friends, but I also had a lot of people who didn’t like me. I think that’s probably why I’m so sensitive about bullyish children now.)

But I digress… So I stood and watched this exchange between Theo and the three little girls, because I wanted to give him a chance to handle the situation on his own--and because they weren’t my daughters, so it wasn’t my place to tell them they were being rather snotty. Every time Theo would try to push the button, one of the three (a different one each time) would shove his hand away and say, “No!” or “You can’t push that!” And Theo would just stare at them, wait for the girl to step away, and then try to push the button again. And then another girl would shove his hand away…and so on. You get the idea. After a few minutes of this, the father of one of the girls walked up and said, “Hey! Are you playing nicely??” and the girls sort of slunk out of the fallen log. And Theo happily started pushing the button.

About 30 seconds later, another little girl (this one younger--probably not quite two years old) toddled up and wanted to push the button. So I said, “Hey, Theo--this little girl wants to push the button, too. Can you share and let her have a turn?” And he stepped away, let her have a turn, looked at me and said, “Feo have another turn?” At this point I assured him he could have another turn after the little girl, and for the next few minutes, he and the little girl very nicely played together with the button.

And I nearly cried. (I’m feeling a bit emotional, I guess!) Here I was standing there watching the bullyish older girls and thinking, “Oh great--now I have to try to ‘undo’ what Theo has just seen from the girls and reinforce that it’s NOT okay to treat someone like that”--and then a new little friend walks up, and Theo is perfectly happy to share and play nicely with her, as if he hadn’t just been pushed around moments before. I was just so, so proud of him--and so happy to see that beautiful, kind, happy spirit that inhabits his heart.

Don’t get me wrong--he’s not a perfect little angel by any stretch! Like all toddlers, he likes to challenge, push the boundaries, test the limits…and if he’s overtired or hungry or not feeling well, he can be an unbelievably whiny tyrant to Chris and me. (Sunday, for example, was not a banner day for Theo! He was so crabby in the morning that I told Chris he better get on the road to San Jose quickly, before I changed my mind about dealing with Mr. Crabby Pants on my own.) But it does my heart good to see just how warm and wonderful he is with others. He is a good egg, that boy of mine.  I feel confident that he will fulfill my goal of him being a kind person, because he clearly has so much kindness in him. :-)

Okay, thank you for indulging my proud moment. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m bragging; it’s just that kindness is such a big thing to Chris and me that it really meant a lot to me to see Theo show that. But now I will move along and say that we did have a few fun activities this week. Before Theo got sick, we met up with Janeane, Emma, and Jamie for some playtime at the park. In retrospect, I suspect Theo was starting to feel lousy then, which probably explains why he was rather whiny, but whininess aside, we had a good time playing with them. Emma found a slightly older girl to play with, while Jamie and Theo spent a fair amount of time trotting around the grassy area near the playground, with Jamie stopping to eat mud every now and then. :-)

I’ve been taking a lot of extra Theo shifts because Chris has been working so much--whenever I can the past week or two, I’ve donated my afternoon/evening work time to Chris, so he can keep on top of all his work. And I’ve enjoyed spending the extra time with my boy…but I also needed a little break after a while! So the girls and I met up for sushi and drinks on Thursday, and we had a fabulous time. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, and it was delightful! Besides, the sushi was yummmmmmmyyyy!

My Mom continues the very slow but steady process of recovering. Her incision is healing more slowly than expected, but the doctor told here there is nothing to worry about--it’s just a bit slow to heal. So she has a home health nurse coming in every other day to change the dressing. I’ve been checking in on her every other day, but I’m not really qualified to do the kind of dressing change she needs, so I’m glad that she has hired some help! She should be healed and cleared to re-enter the outside world in a few weeks--just in time for our joint TAX APPOINTMENT! Wow, what an fun and exciting debut back into society, eh?!

Last but not least, I have my first job interview in more than 10 years on Tuesday, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous. It’s for a contract editing spot with the California State Auditor’s Office, and it’s only for 4 to 32 hours of week per month, so I’m not sure why an in-person interview is required…but it is. And so, I shall summon up all my nerve and hope I don’t blow it! (No, I’m definitely not giving up my main editing gig--this is just a side job to hopefully help make ends meet a little better.)

This week’s album is a little sparse because we didn’t do much exciting, but I’m including some bathtub pix I shot while experimenting with a cheap little flash diffuser than my friend Kim loaned me. I hate using flash because I think the lighting is harsh and icky, but Kim spent $20 on a little flash diffuser and was quite pleased with the results, so she loaned it to me to play with. I must say, I like the results much better than straight, non-diffused flash! Theo’s a little pale and splotchy in the pix because he has been sick, but I tried to touch them up a bit. Actually, I indulged myself in some photo-processing fun. Usually I’m in such a hurry to get all the pictures “developed” on the computer and put up on the blog that I don’t really play with fun effects. This week, since we didn’t have as many pix, I applied some effects to some of them. Enjoy!