Sorry for the delay between posts, won’t happen again. (Well, it will, but now it’s going to be part of the regular Bowman rotation).
So what have we missed? Some little things we all deal with, sick kids, holidays, doctors and dentists appointments. Oh, and the first goose egg.
Last post was about Brant’s vocabulary expanding. It’s safe to say from then until now, the boy has turned into another person. Not much baby left in there, much to the dismay of my wife. He’s never been a cuddler like his big sister and even though he’s not yet 2, there might be some empty-nest stuff settling in there. He loves his ‘boks’ (blocks), books and cars. And Christmas lights.
I’m as big a nut for holiday exterior illuminations as the next guy, but Brant takes it to the next level. One night we were sitting in the car waiting to pick up Maren from school. It was about dusk and got darker and darker. I was on the phone with a local radio station doing an interview with Brant in the backseat. All of a sudden houses in the neighborhood started to have their holiday lights pop on. “WOOOAAAHHH!” he yelped from the back seat on the first one. “DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY!” on the next. This went on for 5 minutes. The kid just melts when he sees Christmas lights. One of the saddest days ever when I took the lights off our tree recently.
On to the goose egg. The Thursday before Christmas was the annual holiday party at Brant’s daycare. As one of the boys played on a plastic sliding board (much to the concern of parents watching) Brant mulled around. Then he decided he wanted a toy to play with, so he turned and took off. Within three steps he tripped over someone’s foot and went head-first right into a bookshelf. By the time he rolled over, he had a goose egg the size of a golf ball sticking out of his forehead. He did not cry. Just stuck his arms in the air. A teacher picked him up, handed him to me and then he broke down.
You think anyone’s gonna notice?
I talked him off the ledge for a while, although he wanted no part of an ice pack. Then Santa walked through the door and it was melt-down city. So head into bookshelf = no cry. Santa Claus = end of world.
Spent some time in the hospital with him, doc said he was fine, just a bump and a likely black eye for Christmas, which never materialized. Thinking about it now, it was probably best I was the parent on hand when it happened. Sometimes kids react based on others’ reaction and if my wife had seen first-hand what I saw, it would have been freak-out city for everyone.
Life’s been a little less exciting with Maren recently. Room cleaning remains a gigantic issue. For some reason, a 7-year-old mind cannot process the simple fact that if you put something away when you are done with it, you eventually won’t have to waste an entire Saturday cleaning it. I wasn’t the biggest fan of cleaning my room either, so now I feel like a bad kid for putting my parents through the same headaches.
One thing we have struggled with in dealing with Maren has at least been a pleasant problem. The kid loves to read. Loves it. She’s now digging on the Boxcar Children books. She read a couple before the holidays, then landed a 14-book box set from the grandparents for Christmas. She tore through a bunch of them, but now we are running into an issue where she is staying up a couple of hours after bedtime to read. I feel bad telling her to put a book down, but eventually you’ve got to sleep.
The other day she came downstairs on Sunday morning carrying two of them. “Why do you need two books, honey?” I asked. “Cuz there’s only 58 pages left in this one and I want to have the next one ready,” she said never looking up from the page. Good problem to have, I guess.
‘Bout to knock this thing out.
Until next time…
livingdad 