Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Don't Play With Sticks

We often go for walks around our neighborhood.  We have a special name for these walks.  We call them exploring walks. On our walk, we take a bag or 2 and fill it up with all kinds of treasures we find along the way: rocks, pretty leaves, acorns, bugs, twigs and branches, flowers or anything else that might strike our fancy.  It helps them to give the walk a purpose, and we can share our finds with Daddy when he gets home.

Today our exploring walk had a special focus: leaf collecting.  We set out to gather leaves to use as decorations for Thanksgiving.  (which you can see here)  James and William thought this was great and began to fill up their bags at the first tree.  But, they quickly got distracted.  We came upon a construction site.  So our nice, quiet autumn walk became a long, loud stop to watch the tractors dig adventure.  

I finally tore them away and we continued.  We were looking for a tree that had red leaves.  We found one pretty quickly. But as I was gathering leaves the boys found sticks.  Now leaf collecting was completely uninteresting.  Soon those sticks were hitting every tree in site, being poked into bushes and holes in the ground, sword fighting, and most fun of all, running along all the fences.

The funny thing about sticks is that when James was 2 I never let him play with them.  "You'll poke your eye out" and all those reasons were foremost on my mind and lips.  But now I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old and they play with sticks.  All the time.  What is it about sticks anyway?  Why are they so great?  I do know that they find them on every walk and they are always greatly entertaining.  I am beginning to realize that I have to let them do some things that are dangerous.  But in a safe way.  If I never let them climb trees, or jump from high places or sword fight  with sticks, I'll be robbing them of some essential parts of their boyhood.  I don't get all of  this mommy of boys stuff, but I am learning.

So I've given up on the whole "don't play with sticks" thing.  And all eyes are still unpoked.  At least for right now.      

5 comments:

Erin McDonald said...

ok I loved these pictures! But please tell in all the excitment of cooking a prize winning Trukey you took pictures of your decorations, family enjoying thanksgiving and of course the TURKEY!!! I love you and am glad you had a great thanksgiving! We had a nice one as well. Check my blog! Tell your boys and girl I said Hi and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Greta said...

Are you crazy??? Of course I took picc. Tons. I will post them tonight. I love your pics too. I am headed to your blog next to post a comment. Your dinner was far more impressive than mine given your circumstances and appliance situation. You go girl.

kristen said...

The other day we went somewhere were there was a bonfire. Picture a bunch of boys getting their sticks on fire and running around with them! I had to drag Jack away from that scene.Two things boys love, sticks and fire!

Greta said...

That sounds like Lord of the Flies. Boys. James nailed 3 different people with sticks today at the beach. Not intentionally, he was just swinging them around paying no attention to anything around him.

Ginger Ellyn said...

hahaha, the part about how you never used to let James play with sticks when he was two, but with William it's normal. That seems just like our family and Roxanne. Later bedtimes, earlier prevledges. Just a few day ago when we were Christmas shopping and i was telling my mom how i wanted an ipod, and Roxanne says "well if she gets and ipod than i can have one too." My mom explained that that wasn't how it worked, but might be able to get one for her birthday. Did i mention she is 8!