Collecting

I am always amazed how much I have to learn about parenting. 

Jack and I got home yesterday from our weekly Storytime outing and we had nothing to do. Since he watched too much TV last week, I was resolved to do just about anything else. We went outside and played, and I let him take the lead in what we did. It was interesting, just following him around seeing what he wanted to do. We ended up on a big rock, looking through the dirt. Of course my first instinct was to say something about getting dirty, but I resisted and just went with it. He found the most amazing things there in the dirt, empty snail shells, the skeleton of a leaf, some berries that he loved to take the skin off of, a dead beetle. As he found each of these things he piled them up, and then when we found the beetle he put it into one of the snail shells for his bed and built a roof over it with leaves and dirt to make it a "cozy house" (all I can say is that beetle was glad it was dead). He spent over an hour doing this building of what he ended up calling his "Collection," and it helped me to realize that, especially in parenting, I need to slow down more and live in the moment. I was amazed how many kisses and I love yous I got from him and I could see him soaking in all the time I was spending with him, doing nothing. 

These are the rare moments when I think I may actually grow up to be a decent Mom one day.