stepdad-in-progress

J and I have been getting closer, at a good, gentle pace. There's usually a shift any time I do anything to take care of him, like watch him for a couple hours while Anna does something, but it also helps that we have our regular 10-15 minutes in the morning between the end of the Morning Snuggle and Anna's having breakfast ready. The other day I hung out with him a bit and then fed him dinner, which he started eating with his hands (and probably nibbling like a squirrel, though I wasn't paying much attention).

"Use the fork, please."
"Whyyyyy do you always have to sound like Mama?!"

"Hmm. Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"Well, I've had to think about this, because I'm new to this whole parenting thing. My initial thought was that we ask you to use a fork because we want you to grow up to be happy. But then I was wondering, what does that mean? What I came up with is that we want you to grow up in harmony with the world around you. As we get older, people really expect us to do things the way our culture says we should, and eating with a fork is one of those things. It's kind of strange, we can wear whatever clothes we want, but we have to eat with a fork. If you don't eat with a fork, there's a lot of conflict with other people, and it makes our lives really difficult. So that's part of what it means to be in harmony with the world. Does that make sense?"

"Yes."

"You sure? I was talking for a long time."
"Yes."

Then he ate the rest of his dinner with a fork, kind of: J's fork-fu usually means he places the fork on the place, impales a piece of food using his non-fork hand, then lifts the fork to his mouth. It's a process. We'll get there.

Apropos of nothing, really. We are J-less for about 6 days, and after 3 or so, I miss him.