Do not go gentle to that good nap...actually, please do.

Choices

So…
I said,
time for nap, yay!

The response did not match my level of enthusiasm. But I continued.

Would you rather,
I asked,
lie in your crib, or would you rather have me hold you?

There is a place for both independence and choice in this world. There are situations where you leave the road ahead wide open. And there are situations where you provide an either/or scenario.

This is the joy and the responsibility and the agony of being a parent: we provide a starting point, and we provide choices along the way that help them get to a good place.

That’s the idea and the plan anyway.

So we snuggled, and I held him in my arms, and he may not remember, but I will never regret a moment of those arms around my neck as his little body took a break from going hard and got recharged. In my arms.

Eventually he went into the crib, with a deep sigh and a nestling into the comfort of his slumber sanctuary. So sometimes you do end up getting your cake and eating it too. That’s how I choose to frame things.

A toddler boy snuggles with his stuffed animal during nap

Poetry

We reviewed Em Dickinson (1861’s Hope is the thing with feathers), John Donne (1624’s No Man is an Island), and did a first read-through and discussion of Dylan Thomas’s beautiful plea for his father’s continued existence, Do not go gentle into that good night, first published in 1951.*

Short Stories

We talked about Guy de Maupassant‘s 1884 classic The Necklace, in which our not altogether-likeable protagonist spends ten years of her life working to pay off a necklace she borrowed and lost. Life’s dreams and hopes are lost along the way and she becomes cold, hard, jaded, bitter. But finally, the debt is paid. And then, a chance run-in, and the story takes a different turn at the end…

Other

We played soccer at the skate park and played with a wild chicken running around.

Every part of the sentence above is true, although the use of a certain verb might be misleading. But technically it’s all true.

“LIBRARY!” He screeched, he screeched with all of his two-year old excitement. How did I keep a gigantic smile off my face at hearing this?

I didn’t.

What happened on the drive home? Oh, no big deal. Just the world’s loudest Hamilton sing-a-long. No big deal.

We took bets on the way home over what Becca would be playing when we walked in. Would it be:

Phosphorescent? Or Xavier Rudd?

Finally, we entered, to the smells of baking and the sound of x-marks-the-spot. We are together, it is good.