This Easter is a rather quiet one for Aruna and me. Raj and William travelled down to visit the grandparents in Devon for 4 days (I think the longest I have been apart from William!). I dithered and cogitated about going for days until finally I resigned to staying in Liverpool. The anxiety about travelling for 4+ hours in the car with Aruna won out. (I was remembering a couple of nightmarish long journeys with William as a baby, and these memories influenced my decision this weekend.)
Before they went, I had a little more time to spend with my son this week as he was not at nursery school. This proved to be very enjoyable. "What?! You don't enjoy spending time with your son?!" I hear you cry. The truth is, the last months have been challenging in that respect and dark clouds were gathering in my heart. William has been growing away from me slowly, with little spurts, some self-driven, some rather thrust upon him by our circumstances here and there (ie moving house, changing jobs, schools etc and a new baby). I can accept this, but, where possible, I want his path to independence to be a gentle one; I often regret those times when that path is punctuated by small kicks up the backside from those circumstances that are less easily controlled.
So, during one of those moments where I was lacking in inspiration (of which, I have many), William suggested we play a game and got the wooden farm set out. I'm not very good at playing with William sometimes, but I've always liked this particular toy because there are no rules and lots of make believe. So, we sat down and really enjoyed ourselves for a little while. I even forgot about the mess in the house (something I am easily overwhelmed by in our small space). Play naturally flowed on to singing a nursery rhyme called "Farmer Brown" and since we couldn't remember all the words, we sat together and wrote them all down. William was having a lot of fun, and so was I. This brought to mind my earlier thoughts about home-schooling, and how this natural flow of play, some independent, and some guided by the parent is the best form of learning for a young child.
Ok, so the photograph looks a little staged. I only thought of taking one after they had gone. It did look somewhat like this, honestly. A very happy afternoon.
