Tuesdays with Walter

Posted by Kevin......

Henry is in pre-school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is a wonderful time for Walter and me to hang out without the constant interruptions from his big brother.

However, Walt seems to be satisfied with the current level of attention he usually gets, and finds my constant requests for additional hugs and the elaborate "scenario set ups" of his toys on these school days to be annoying interruptions.

While he is downright magnanimous the first seven or thirty times I stop him in his tracks to pick him up and squeeze the tuna salad out of him, eventually he sneaks off to some secluded* corner of our house to engage in a little "me time".

*(editor's note: it's no insignificant feat that Walter can find seclusion within it's confines of our outgrown, hectic home.)

And when things get quiet for more than a minute and Walter is not in my immediate sight, well I get nervous. But it seems that THIS son is content to curl up with a good book, or a crayon and paper, or even a crayon AND a good book*.

*(This usually does not end well for that book.)

Here are the observations from today:

-Walter was in Henry's room. I peeked in and he was sitting on the floor leafing through a book. After he turned each page, he briefly stuck a finger in each ear. Apparently the action in the book was quite loud.

-I watched as Walter placed a toy horse and a toy cow on the tracks of the sliding back door. But instead of slamming the door shut on them, he slowly turned around, looked back at them, then sat on them. He then held out his hand as if to stop the door. Was he protecting them?

-Walt walked up to me in the kitchen and showed me he had my spare car keys. He said something I didn't understand, then walked away. Next I see him at the front door trying to stick the key in the door handle. Where's he going? What's his plan? He doesn't have any money.

-I watched him while he ate lunch. He looked down at his bowl of veggies, opened his mouth as wide as he could and very slowly lowered his face into the bowl. This is a little trick he learned from his brother. Kind of a set back in the "let's use utensils" department.

-Walter was whimpering in the other room, and when I arrived he was holding a shark in one hand and a dolphin in the other. They were engaged in an epic struggle of life and death as both were locked jaw to jaw. I intervened and of course was immediately hit over the head with both the shark and the dolphin. As he stormed out of the room, a furious Walter continued to scold me for not letting nature determine the outcome of the conflict.

-Walter was walking around with a pen, which I promptly traded him for a crayon. That's because I'm an attentive parent. Later, I found the paper cover from the crayon....but no crayon. Something tells me his diaper is going to be a little more "burnt sienna" than usual.