Summer's end

Today, I waved at my son on the school bus, his first school bus ride. I waited at the bus stop with another dad and his two sons. My son didn't want me to bring my camera and take pictures, because the other dad wasn't doing that. All the kids had new shoes, new backpacks, shiny new faces, and a new future coming at them.

And so I join the unknowable number of parents who have watched their babies take the first steps to becoming their future selves.

We've instilled a summer theme, a vacation, as it were, into our last days of summer before school starts. Trips to Cedar Point and Lake Erie islands, visits to nearby relatives to brag and demonstrate the boy's growth, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

As I look out the window at the sun shining on trees and grass and houses, I remember my own first day of school, photographed by my mom, as proud of me then as I am of my son now. As any parents must be of their children leaving the nest on a new adventure. Just as on his first day of prekindergarten two years ago, I'll hold back the tears and let go the prayers and wait on pins and needles for his report this afternoon.

Bite of shirt?

My son is eating his shirt.

Okay, maybe not actually ingesting it, but he sticks the collar or any part of it into his mouth and chews on it. He does the same for certain pillows.

I remember a time in the distant past where I found the taste of saliva-soaked cotton curiously comforting. I think I was told at least half a million times to quit doing it, but didn't help. I'd still eat my shirts.

And now I'm waging a similar battle with my son, telling him for the 499,999th time about the 500,000th time I caught him with part of his shirt in his mouth.

Hm. He is losing another baby tooth, though. I wonder if the salty sweat in the shirt goo makes the blood in his mouth taste better. Weird.

The real reason

Jordan likes to play his video games, and that's all right, I guess. I would, too, if I were him. But sometimes I like to get his nose out of them. And here's where I forgot to ask a question.

Getting ready for church this morning, I tell Jordan to turn off his game and get his shoes on. He says he wants to take the game with him, but I say, no, turn it off for a while. He disappears for a few seconds, returns, and says Mommmy said he could take the game.

I let it go. Not a battle worth waging. Especially when I tried being heavy-handed in demanding no game. After I had time to think about the situation, I figured out what had gone wrong: I'd demanded he do what I say without explaining the reason. And when he went over my head, I was too upset to think about the real reason I wanted him to turn off the game.

If I'd explained to him in the first place that the reason I wanted the game off was so he and I could talk. I like to hear his feelings and thoughts, and if I'd told him that, you know the game would have been off in a second. Or maybe his "thought" at that moment would have been that he'd rather play the game.