The Weekend

Weekends are a mixed bag. Great because we get to spend a lot of time with Jack, tough because entertaining a 3-year-old can sometimes be tougher than you might think.

We get up, and the first problem is that Jack is raring to go and I (to quote Charlie Brown) feel like I've been stepped on by an elephant. Once this would have been because I went to bed too late or drank too much or something, but now it's because I got woken up 3-4 times during the night, often by Jack. (See previous blogs.) Take last night, when Jack came in three times, and twice I had a hard time getting back to sleep. Once he had to go pee. That was fine. Once I don't really know why he got up. I failed to ask him and he failed to mention it. He just turned and headed back to his room. That was when I had a hard time getting back to sleep afterward. The best was when I asked him: Why? Jack: "My puppy said 'no' to me." (He sleeps with several stuffed animals, dogs of late.) I'm sure there's a clever way to respond to "My puppy said 'no' to me," but one didn't occur to me at 3 a.m. So I just said, "Jack. Don't get out of bed again." Until he shook me awake a little before 7, he didn't.

Anyway, Jack is raring to go, but one of the things he most likes to do these days is watch the DVD of The Jungle Book. It's not really The Jungle Book's fault, mind you; before that there was Backyardigans, or Maisy, or Charlie Brown Christmas or something. We don't let him watch TV from Monday through Thursday. I'm sure this will change at some point, but for now it's a case of there not being much time; he wakes up (ideally) around 6:30 and goes to school at 8, then gets home at 5:15 or so, with the evening being filled by a small amount of playing, then dinner, bath, stories, and bed. Just not much time in there to watch a half hour show (let alone The Jungle Book). The upshot (which I'm wondering if it might not be a problem in itself) is that he doesn't watch TV most of the week, so he craves it on the weekends. Or something.

Now, the best way to get him away from watching TV is by scheduling activities. This is hard when it's bitterly cold or rainy out, as it's been for much of the past couple of months, or when he's got a cold and/or cough (things which tend to go hand in hand with the bitterly cold and rainy thing). As I write this I realize it's kind of a lousy excuse, and granted, we do plan trips to the Aquarium (two weeks ago) and were going to hit the Stepping Stones museum this weekend (but he had a cold and cough), but then again, I'm not going to call up the neighbors to see if their child can play with Jack when Jack's not well -- I wouldn't want Jack catching anything from him, either, and I imagine they feel similarly.

So without a major activity, it's pretty hard to fill three days. A lesson for the future: make sure you've got at least two decent activities in a three-day weekend. Next weekend, Stepping Stones Museum one day, something else another. Weekend after that, Vermont. OK, we're making progress.

Lacking those, we have lots of minor activities. We went to the supermarket to recycle bottles on Friday. ("Wanna go smash bottles?" I say. "Yeah!" says Jack.) Jack also went to the grocery store with Mommy. And there's, you know, about 90 minutes out of the day. We do puzzles. Lots and lots of puzzles, over and over again. Read books. Do some coloring, which he enjoys for about 10 minutes. Build things with his blocks and legos and play with trains. These are all, also, 10-15 minute activities. Now, there have been days, and maybe there will be again, when he can play with his blocks for a good hour, happily. But then again, I can't remember the last day like that. I'll be down there gamely moving trains around the tracks, and within 10 minutes he'll lose interest and suddenly the lure of King Louie singing to Mowgli "I wanna be like You-ooooo-oooo" has taken him away.

I think we do OK. I know -- know -- he watches a lot less TV than most other kids his age. A woman I know has a son close to Jack's age and she reels off her son's "favorite" shows, which sounds like the entire morning lineup on Nickelodeon. That's a little scary.

Today was Grampa's birthday, and we all went out for brunch to Norwalk (A midday activity! Yes!), then came back and Jack and his cousins ran around the house. Suddenly, he enjoyed playing with his toys, for a good two hours straight. And I realized that the problem isn't necessarily his toys, but that -- much as I might like to think otherwise sometimes -- I'm not a kid anymore. I'm definitely not a 5-year-old girl. (Which is a good thing.) And however hard I try and silly I act, Jack's not going to have the goofy fun running around the house with me that he can with his crazy cousins. Which is also a good thing. Aside from the time we put him in a timeout for whacking Stacey with a plastic hammer, he had a lot of fun. And didn't ask or likely even think about watching TV.

So 1) activities and 2) activities with kids his age are the important lessons we've learned in recent weeks. And who knows? Maybe he'll be so wiped out that he'll stay in bed all night tonight. You never know.