Sunday, January 18, 2009

Birthday, Gifts and Knots.

This weekend we celebrated 4th Birthday of a very special boy. David and I met his mom, Sadaf, and Jordan when he was only 6 months old in our local park. Sadaf and I bonded quickly as we were both stay-at-home moms, both new to NJ and a few months later we were both expecting our daughters who are only 20 days apart. As I was filling out a card for Jordan, so many memories came rushing in. We both used to bring our boys to the rec center for their gym classes, Jordan used to come over to our house and practice his walking on our soft carpet and Sadaf and I used to meet up in a park and walk together while pushing the boys in their strollers trying to loose those post pregnant pounds. Even though our schedules are different now, the boys are in different schools, we still keep in touch, go out and have occasional playdates. Julia will be joining her daughter, Mina, in a school next September which I am looking forward to because I'll be seeing my friend more often and Julia will hopefully make a friend for life. I feel very melancholic about these past years as the boys were so adorable and cute (they still are, but in a different way), I had almost a naive perception of a motherhood and I had no clue how easy it was. So, today we had a great day bowling, riding a train, bouncing, eating lots of pizza and ice cream cake (the cake must have been really good since when asked Julia if she could share it with me, she yelled back "Go away!"). Happy Birthday, Jordan! 4 already?
While the kids were napping or so I thought, I started wrapping up the gifts. Then I realized that I had neither a big enough bag to fit them in nor a string to tie them together. So, since I had a lot of blue yarn, I decided to knit a string. Didn't work either since it would have taken me longer to knit than I had time for. Scratch that idea, move to another. I decided to braid it. Five minutes into it, David came downstairs and asked if he could help me. His help started irritating me as he would write his name on the little notepads and insist on taping them to the gift boxes. Somewhere I read that kids like cutting strings, so I told him to cut some leftover strings into different length. That lasted less than a minute. But then he decided to wrap a string around each box. I saw how much he wanted to "help" me that I let him. I decided that since Jordan is just like any 3 or 4 year old boy, he won't pay much attention to how well or neatly a gift is wrapped.
And then I noticed that not only was David wrapping a gift, he was trying to tie a knot.



I have never shown him hot to tie a knot, but then I have never shown him how to zip a jacket or turn his clothes inside out and he does it, he learned it on his own. I always purchase him shoes with velcros on them for a few reasons. I don't want to be bothered tying his shoes and I want him to feel as though he is a big, independent boy getting dressed all by himself. I don't think he ever had any shoes with shoe laces, but it might be time for them.



So, there it is, his first knot.



I don't remember right now if I took that piece of string off, but as I said before, I doubt Jordan paid much attention to the "accessories" of his wrapping paper. And his mom? She might, but considering Sadaf's got a 4 year old and a 2 year old, I can be assured she stopped questioning odd things a long time ago.

No comments: