Jed: Did you know that the mother of Bilbo Baggins is Belladonna Took Baggins and his father Bungo Baggins built the most luxurious Hobbit hole for her. Sounds a lot like Taj Mahal, only it is not a tomb.
Some two nights ago, he went to blabber about hearing vibrations when he placed his ear against the wall.
Jed: Mama, it’s the first time I heard sound coming from the wall. Mama, did you know that sound waves come from vibrations that are converted by air.
Then, there are those that he would express his observations from the cartoons he grew up with.
Jed: Did you know that Goofy and Mater have almost the same voice?
There are tons more but you get the drift — I have one very expressive young boy. Sometimes, as a full time mom, I have the tendency to take for granted all his chatters since I have been hearing them from the time he started talking. Intensified altogether when he started to read a whole lot. His Science Library he got seriously into at 4 years old and he would go over them time and again until he progressed to reading novelized Cartoons, the 6 books of Star Wars and just recently J.R.R. Tolkien’s, The Hobbit. I never got to read the first of the Lord of the Rings installment until around the year I got married, that was in 2001.
There are a handful lot of trivia our son can get into at a time. Sometimes I do not have an idea anymore whether they are at all accurate. My most common question to him is will be, where did you learn/read that from? Then sometimes, because a mom has to juggle things at a time, I can count the number of times I give him my full attention. With so much to do and so little time, what’s a mom to do?
Yes, as a mother I relish the satisfaction of being successful in nurturing in him the love for reading. The benefits of which are vast. But there is more to to it than that. I want to enjoy him, learn from him, be his student even. Aside from wanting to document these things my son has been so into all these years that I might just have the slightest tendencies to take for granted, I choose to drink this in even as every year means I have to let go a little. Which reminds me, I still have to blog about his 8th birthday. Getting down to it makes me more sentimental than usual. And the antihistamine in my system kicking in is not exactly the perfect combination to get that post published for now. 🙂
Today, I realize my tendency to always be on the “multi-tasking mode.” Actually, I’ve realized that a long time ago, only now do I choose to stare it in the face. More often than not, I listen to my son while I fold the laundry, work on articles, cook our meal, et. al. While no one can blame me for trying to be as productive as possible to supplement the family income and get the household smoothly running (while homeschooling altogether), I run the risk of losing these precious moments of knowing my son and the kind of person he is growing up to be. I will have to intentionally remind myself to choose to be in his world, indulge and “be there” be there. Love God and love people. The rest follows. Other tasks will have to come next when I’m done with my share of filling that tiny little love tank my not so little boy has. 🙂
