Nothing and I mean nothing prepares you for parenthood. You may think you know what your getting into, but until you live it you have no clue. Lately, I have been struck by the constant obligation of teaching. I know I gave some thought to what I want my kids to know, but I had no clue about the enormity of 24/7 teaching and learning about everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!
Case in point, last night for the first time my son got ahold of a dollar bill. He knows about coins, we have managed to convince him that coins are for feeding the pig. (putting in his piggy bank) First, he was calling the dollar a ticket. When I tried to tell him it was money, he was not buying it. Then my husband and I settled on calling it a dollar. He picked that up just fine and managed to play with it during our drive to Target last night. As I got out of the car, my husband was getting our son out of his carseat and felt the need to take a few minutes to instill a lesson about dollars. A few minutes later we were walking into the store discuss the virtues of the dollar bill's ability to secure juice and food. I just had to laugh that was our teaching moment in the Target parking lot. Dollars = juice & food.
What I have found amusing in the last few weeks with my 2 year old son is finely honed ability to already filter things he just doesn't want to know or learn, yet in other ways he is like a sponge ready to soak up whatever I offer.
A couple of examples to illustrate….. To begin you must know that my son, has beautiful, dark brown eyes. I think they are stunning given that he has very fair skin and strawberry-blonde hair. I on the other had share his coloring, but have blue-eyes. Recently, he was looking at my eyes and for the first time notices I have blue eyes. I got a mirror and we were looking at him and I asked him what color his eyes were. He insisted they were blue, also. I pointed out that he had beautiful, brown eyes. He was very insistent that he had blue eyes. I let him be. A couple of days later, we played the same game. This time hesitanting he said he has beautiful, brown eyes. I could tell he really didn't believe it, he was just repeating what I said before. I think he still thinks he has blue eyes, he is just telling me what I want to hear.
My son likes to pretend he is a puppy. He barks, pants and licks while crawling on his hands and knees. His Dad taught him this trick. I think it is particularly funny, when he loves on his Dad as a puppy and licks his forehead. It is a slobbery mess. So I was trying to get our son to take a nap and he thought it would be fun to play puppy and kept repeating "I am a puppy", I quietly said "No, you are a boy who needs to take a nap" or some version there of. He would say "I am not a boy, I am a puppy." I let it go, but the next morning. He was playing while I was getting ready for work. He was doing his fish impersonation. Similar to the puppy deal, but with o-shaped mouth and swimming actions. This time instead of saying he was a fish, he declared himself to be fish-boy. He heard what I was saying the night before despite his insistance otherwise and incorporated the knowledge to work for his world.
Finally, we made it to the pool two times over the holiday weekend. On our second visit my son found a green, plastic jewel about the size of a half dollar coin. I recognized it at a jewel from a pool treasure chest playset I saw at the store. Since we were the last people at the pool, I assume someone abandoned it and let my son keep it. He was definitely coveting the jewel and repeatedly described the jewel. It was green and a rectangle. In a fit of imagination I told him that it was a jewel from a teasure chest. The pirates must have dropped it the night before when moving their treasure around. He was fascinated. My husband and mother looked at me like I had lost my mind. Was I really going to tell my son that pirates visited the neighborhood pool every night moving treasure around. Yes, I was. Guess what? The little guy sucked up the story, as if it was the only word of truth he has ever heard from my mouth. He repeated the story for the thirty minutes or so that the jewel held his interest. I'm fairly certain when he rediscovers the jewel, he will be telling the pirate story.
