I decided to write something so the forlorn message in the bottle would start moving down the list. For those who are interested, E.S.D still does not have a PhD, but she's trying to keep trucking along.
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I've always imagined I would be the type of parent that encouraged my child's interests and talents instead of pushing my own ideas of what they should be talented at, as long as those interests were wholesome. I think Joe is pretty much the same way except he is all about providing the 'right environment' so that certain things just might so happen to get ingrained in their system. They don't have to like superheroes, but if superheroes are in the toy basket, on the bookshelves, on our blankets, on our towels, on our dishes, etc., it's not his fault if they turn into pop culture nerds like he is, right?
Well, for awhile now, Lizzie has had a keen interest in a certain type of thing. You might wonder why I would let a child develop such an interest in this thing or things, but they seem to give her hours of delight. What is the thing, you ask?
Rubber Bands. Yellow Rubber Bands, Red Rubber Bands, Brown Rubber Bands, Blue Rubber Bands, Thick Rubber Bands, and Thin Rubber Bands.
We had a bag in our 'Bat Cave', aka storage room, and although we try and keep that room closed, she sneaks in there sometimes and one day she must have found our bag of rubber bands. And not knowing what joy would erupt from that baggie, we opened it and Lizzie's world changed. She even sniffed out her Grandma Swen's bag of rubber bands in her apartment and usually goes to find it within 5 minutes of entering the premises.
She doesn't eat them (well, on rare occasions she does wait for you to look at her and then smiles and sticks one in her mouth) and she doesn't seem to flick herself or others with them or cut off circulation in any of her phalanges.
Instead, she puts them in buckets and cans, any type of container really, and then she dumps them out. And sometimes she stands tall with a handful of them and lets them rain down. Other times she takes them behind furniture and stores them there. Pretty much our floor is constantly covered with rubber bands and at night it takes about 3 or 4 sweeps to collect them all from the crevices. Well, not all of them. I'm pretty sure we have some in random places that we'll find years from now.
My question to you all is this: How do I develop this interest?
Having closed the MI chapter of our lives, where we met, fell in love, and survived graduate school together, we are now on to being professors in ID. While we enjoy teaching, our lives revolve around each other and our kids: Lizzie & Kit.
4 comments:
I love this stage! Anna can keep occuppied for hours just putting anything small in a drawer and pulling it out, putting it in a bucket, dumping it out. She will find anything such as pieces of paper, small toys of her siblings, and the cat toys. She learning cause and effect, "if I put something in this drawer and close it, it will still be there when I open the drawer again." I love that there's something to keep her busy for a while so I can get something done :)
Biggest Ball of Twine - Minnesota. Any other questions?
Kids sure like to do funny things. Now I'm feeling a nostalgic pining for the rubber band ball I made in High School. It was bigger than a softball--too big for broccoli rubber bands.
Re: message in a bottle. GO EMILY! YOU CAN DO IT!!!
Hayden, has the dam fettish, except he does flick himself! He particularly loves me hair ties. He loves to put them on top of my lotion bottles and carry it around. I love how simple things keep us all entertained. Enjoy it, tkae them to church and hope that she can sit through an hour of bliss with her rubber bands! :)
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