Saturday Mornings and Beyond

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During each of Brevin's "stages", I try to keep telling myself to enjoy it while it lasts. And although I'm tempted to lump him in a broad "baby" stage, it's fun to see his little advances. Whether it's taking a bottle, moving up in clothe/diaper sizes, smiling/laughing, and now sitting up, I sometimes find myself saying "remember when" and he's only 7 months old.

Each "stage" does go as quickly as it came. Now as a rookie dad I don't know when that starts to slow down, but it's going fast. The reason I bring this up is this morning was his first "solid" breakfast. (Man I'm using quotations a lot in this post. Can you tell I'm not completely "with it"?) (Yes I used those quotations on purpose.) ;)

Anyway...being he's started eating cereal in the morning, it got me looking forward to when he's old enough to get up on his own, the both of us go downstairs (or where ever the family room happens to be) each having a bowl of Count Chocula, and watching Saturday morning cartoons with each other. I realize that's a few years away but going back to my initial ramblings of "stages", it won't be that long.

I'm really looking forward to being involved in his life. Watching what he's watching. Listening to what he's listening to. Doing what he wants to do. Obviously Erin and I are going to do our best at leading by example and guiding what media he does take in, but whatever his interests are, I want to be involved.

Some of my favorite memories consist of my parents being involved with us while we were growing up. Whether it was my mom taking us to the library during the summer to check out the books we wanted. Or my dad taking my brother and I to the baseball card shows and each of us, including my dad (much to the chagrin of mom) purchasing sports cards.

It was fun to do whatever I enjoyed with my folks. Of course they would bring us to church, their friends homes, or errands that we wanted nothing to do with. (Yes I said church.) But they were setting a good example even though I didn't see at the time. (Like probably every other kid, I thought they did it just to be mean.) ;)

My point of my current soapbox is before Brevin doesn't want to hang out with me, I'm gonna hang out with him. I know I won't always want to, but I'm going to make a conscious effort to put him before myself.

So on behalf of all of the sons and daughters out there, thank you mom's and dad's for leading by example by spending time with us.

—b