And now six years have passed.
Almost.
Our son will be six in May.
Six years.
I’d imagine six years would seem like a long time if you had to spend it in prison.
But when those six years are attached to a little boy who has your heart and your full attention, those six years pass by quicker than cupcakes getting snatched up at an over-eaters anonymous meeting.
Our son has brought so much joy into our lives in the last six years. And frustration. But mostly joy. And frustration.
Joy. Frustration. Joy. Frustration. This is the parenting pendulum that everyone endures, seemingly. Thankfully the pendulum doesn’t stay for long on the frustration side.
He has a (concerning-at-times) love/obsession/fascination of sports.
We bought two over-the-door basketball hoops for him to play basketball inside the house, one hoop for upstairs and one hoop for downstairs. You never know when the need to practice his “Slamma Jamma” will arise.
We had to take one of the basketball hoops with us on a recent vacation.
His fondest memory of this vacation, and the reason he wants to go back to the same place next vacation, is due to the outdoor basketball courts that were a couple blocks away from our rental home. He spent hours there shooting hoops. He’s small for his age so he can’t even shoot overhand, it’s all granny shots.
He’s currently on a baseball team and also wanted to participate in flag football but he’s not old enough yet.
One Sunday afternoon in late winter I turned on the television. It was tuned to ESPN, as it usually is, and pro-bowling was on. My son exclaimed “OOOH! BOWLING! Let’s watch this!”
No one watches bowling. No one.
Except my sports-obsessed son.
Our son is wicked-smart.
I know, I know, EVERYONE thinks their kid is wicked-smart.
Our son has been reading chapter books (he loves the Captain Underpants series) for the last several months. He’s five (soon to be six, as noted) and reading at a 4th grade level.
In kindergarten at his school, students are expected to know sight word lists A, B & C by the end of the school year. He blew through all three of the sight word lists, continuing on to list F by January and then his teacher asked if we wanted her to send home 1st grade homework assignments.
I don’t say this to be boastful or make this a competition with any other kid. I’m positive there are things your kid can do very well that my kid can’t.
I do say these things because of the immense pride and adoration I have for our son.
Isn’t that part of why we have children? To have a miniature edition of us walking around whom we hope we can mold and shape into a better version of ourselves? To be able to proudly say, “Here’s my child. I created this person. Look at how freaking awesome he is.”
Our children are like an apology to the world for our own selves not living up to all that we could/should be. Or at least that’s how I feel. “I’m sorry world, I’m not as awesome as I could have been. But look, here’s my awesome son! Are we square?”
I bought my son a dictionary so he can look up the words that he asks me the meaning of. It’s not that I don’t know the meaning of the word he’s inquiring about; it’s that I struggle giving the original word a definition that makes sense and doesn’t also contain another word he doesn’t know the meaning of.
The first word my son wanted to look up in his new dictionary? Pooping.
Hey, I may have said my son is smart but I never claimed him to be a cultured intellectual. He is only almost six, after all. The age when poop and fart are a boy’s favorite words.
I’m not sure where I was going with this blog post. Sometimes I just need to get thoughts down on paper. I like writing. I’ve read you should write what you know. I know my son. But what I don’t know is the true definition of fart so excuse me while I go look it up in the dictionary.
Dana is a voiceover talent, follower of Christ, loyal wife, and eater of lots of avocados.