The Thinker

On Tuesday, I picked up Henry around 4:30PM. Grammy had volunteered to get him, but I was craving some time with him. I decided to go a little later than usual so that he'd have time on the playground. His class gets to go outside from 4-4:30PM. Miss Diana said that he'd had a good day. My impression is that she has been the major force behind getting Henry to go potty, which he does very well for her. One of his favorite things outside is a water fountain that's just his height. He enjoyed letting the water run over his mouth.

When we got to the car, Henry announced that he wanted to go to "Borders!" I'd been planning to take him to Monkey Business. But I gave him the options: Borders, Barnes & Noble, or Monkey Business. He decided to go to Monkey Business.

We got our tokens once there. Henry looked at me and said "Money!" I gave him a coin. He first wanted to put it on the Space Shuttle, but it was broken. I then put him on the horse, but it was broken as well. So he ended up putting it in a game designed to win tickets. He must have the touch b/c he won 100 tickets. We played skee ball and a game very similar to skee ball. Henry would walk up the alley and put the balls in the gutter. We didn't getting very many tickets that way, but he had a good time. We played basketball. My goal was to make the basket. Henry's goal was to get the ball to stay inside the gaming area. Henry enjoyed his Sponge Bob driving game.

For dinner, I read him his options from the kid's meals. He decided on mini corn dogs and french fries. While at the order counter, the cashier said, "Your son looks like he's a thinker." I guess that she'd been watching him and observed how calm and focused he seemed to be for his age. I couldn't disagree. He enjoyed his dinner and ate A LOT of french fries. He had maybe four bites of hot dog.

I was tempted to play more games with him, but I had forgotten the diaper bag. So we went to the toy counter on our way out. Henry wanted a wooden toy train. He actually already has one, but it is one of the sturdier trinkets that they have there. We used our 174 tickets for the purchase.

As we went to the car, Henry said that he wanted to go to the "mall." I said, "Don't you want to see Daddy?" He said, "No. Mall first." I didn't know that he understood the concept of "first," but he used it appropriately in context. I promised him that we'd take a trip to the mall this week.

It was really nice spending some one-on-one time with Henry. In general, we spend a lot of time with the kids. We are hands-on at home. We don't leave the kids unattended. One of us is just about always engaged with them. Jeff's taken that on especially this last month when I've been finalizing things for the book (all pieces of first draft soon to be delivered to the editor). We love having two of them. But it is nice to spend that quality time with just one. I had been getting that quality time with my girl since Miss R's bio visits switched to the late afternoon/early evening a couple weeks ago. She comes home around 6:30PM. Jeff would go to get Henry at the grandparents' house, leaving me and Miss R with good some one-on-one sessions. I missed out on that tonight, but I was really glad to do something special with just the Doodle Bug.