reflections

Just a few thoughts this evening...

The Boy had his last day of preschool today. In three months, he'll be five and starting kindergarten. I'm not sad over this fact. My Boy is getting older and will do fine in his new class. I'm just wondering where the last five years went. Every day he surprises me with something new, and his questions are always so well thought out, I can see how he's trying to piece the world into something he can comprehend. He asks what words mean, I sometimes feel like a thesaurus trying to use words he understands to describe words he doesn't. He is so subjective. When someone is hurt, he hurts too.

My sensitive Boy will learn to guard himself and his feelings. I almost mourn for that day. Not every person he comes into contact with will understand him, or where he is coming from. As a parent, I want to protect that, but I know that to do that would stunt his growth. He will learn and adapt.

As it is, his brother does his best to aggravate him (well, he gives as good as he gets. It is definitely a two-way street there). They get at each other in ways that boggle my mind. They are especially tuned to grate on each other. I guess that's the way all siblings work. They are born knowing which buttons to push.

But Boy2 seems to be a pro. Every little thing, and it goes both ways, leads to a fight or a tantrum. But they play well together too. The Boy dragged his sleeping bag down, and Boy2 brought down his denim blanket and they were pretending to go camping. The Boy asked Boy2 to sing lullabies to him. "Can you sing me Twinkle Twinkle?" "Sure!" was the response.

Of course, in the midst of this cooperation, the Girl crawls up and starts pulling on their pillows and blankets. "Mommy? Can you put baby in the exersaucer? I don't want her pulling on my sleeping bag." I guess the novelty of having little sis move around on her own is gone in favour of preserving the play space.

That Girl really is moving around now. In just the week that I've been home, she's started crawling around. First it was just getting up to sitting from being on her tummy, and then it was two or three little crawl-like movements before she landed back onto her tummy. This afternoon, she was crawling from the futon, over to the shoes and boots (not the cleanest toys for her to play with...) and then to the stereo where she started pulling on the speakers. Hello, mobility!