A Day Out And All Is Well

Can I just say I love making titles? : ) Its instilled in me from my days in Journalism, I suppose.

We went to Paradise Park today. Will's energy is mind blowing. He had so much fun - his favorite being the building room. He pretends like he is a "worker guy" and was building a replica of the Paradise Park building. The most stressful room - at least for mom - is the dollhouse/farmhouse room. His play is so aggressive with the people and animals. Re-directed to the grocery store and all was better. This is interesting considering our play at home revolves greatly on pretend play with people, cars or animals. Which maybe is not so great for any on us. Oh, to be outdoors again where Will is truly happy. I can't wait for Spring!

I guess its hard for me because I was the little girl that could spend hours setting up a dollhouse, arranging furniture, folding the blankets around the dolls just right. I want Will to have that quiet, inward play. He is so outward. I really want to talk to Ms. Diana more about this. She will have great insight. Instead of always trying to get Will to play gently with those toys that deserve gentleness (he should learn this, I say!), instead I want to provide him with the building opportunites that he obviously so enjoys. Blocks, logs, dominos, legos. We need some legos. He would love that.

Of course, the stress comes when little brother destroys the magnificient building project that Will worked on so hard. Sigh.

Good day today!!!! I wonder how the rest of the day will go... I suspect we are going to be okay today. And Daddy is taking tomorrow off to spend one-on-one time with Will. He really wants to take him to see Curious George which I am not so thrilled with. I will have to tell Mark the story that Will told me today....

"Mommy, there was a shooter guy who put a power sword right into that guy and then the shooter went right into him and he died and went to heaven."

Yep.

Will watches very, very little TV. He watches at home occassionally, but its usually on at his cousins house, where he has seen a few minutes of Power Rangers or something. And it stays with him. And we have the book on tape "Danny and the Dinosaur" where the writer mentions "guns and swords" in the museum. He has seen water guns at the swimming pool. Add to that our neighbor kids's grandma died a couple weeks ago and we watched the kids for several days to help out so that was the Topic Of Conversation quite a bit.
Which is okay - that is life. But anyway... I know I can't shield him forever but he seems to take things in so deeply... I keep thinking of that Walt Whitman poem.
But I just wonder what it is all like for those kids that watch more TV. Are they as affected, or its it taken in more passively?

I wish I could have been 100% PURE on things with Will... I was for awhile (no candy, TV, blah, blah). How do people do that? I also feel I need to accept life as dirty as it can get and not beat myself up for not measuring up to the Mother I Want to Be. Just keep moving forward with insight and courage....