I Love You Dada x50
This past weekend, my 5 year old daughter spent a lot of time with her cousin, who was over at our house for a sleepover and then to their house for another sleepover (yes, back to back). My 4 year old son was unfortunately sick at home again with some recurring stomach bug, but luckily started to feel better towards the end of the long weekend. He began to bounce off the walls and had a decent appetite - all signs that things were trending up with him finally.
Because my daughter was occupied for most of the weekend, my wife and I focused a lot of attention playing with our oldest son while baby was napping most of the day and trying to kick the cold he has. We played a lot of legos, where my son built mini cruisers that all had special powers - fire, ice, wind, and chicken power! I’ll let you guess which one my son came up with, but honestly it was the best one. We spent time using those powers on the cruisers and each other. When I got zapped with the chicken power, I was clucking all over the playroom and my son was laughing so hard. I used the chicken power on him and he did the same thing. We were just being so silly and it was really refreshing to be able to just focus on playing with one kid (because sometimes I have all three kids with me and it’s just survival mode).
My son ended up building construction vehicle with the legos also. He built a dump truck, cement mixer, crane, and a legit steamroller. The steamroller was much better than the one I first built. I went downstairs to grab something and when I came back up, my son rearranged the pieces and actually had the full front of the steamroller built out to touch the carpet. We played with those construction vehicle legos for a while and best of all, he built them with no instructions - only his imagination.
Lastly, we played with some new Playdough my wife came home with after running some errands while I wanted the boys. Baby was easy enough to deal with most of the day luckily. The Playdough session was fun because my older son never gets to play with all the colors and accessories by himself. He usually has to share with his sister, but when he had full access, he covered the whole end table with his creations. We ended up chopping them all into tinier and tinier pieces before cleaning it all up.
The best part of the day was that he saw how playful I was the whole day and fixed just on him. He kept saying he loved Dada. It made me feel happy he had such a fun day even though he woke up missing his sister. Although it’s a random day, I hope it left an imprint on him and that it’s a positive memory of the day with the family because it left an imprint on me. It’s also a reminder that focusing on the kids and giving quality time and attention means the world to them and he let me know that x50.
