I thought this was so sweet! I found it while checking my e-mail. Since today is he big V-day...thought I would share it. It put a smile on my face because situations like this are an everyday part of our lives and sometimes they turn into the most precious and meaningful!
Work and Play
A few months ago, when my husband and I transitioned our son, Sawyer, into a big-boy bed, he refused to nap alone. We explained that we couldn't sleep with him; there was no room in his bed. Of course, he found a loophole. "Sleep next to my bed," he said. "There's room on my rug." Except he kept peeking over his guardrail to giggle at the sight of us. "Use my blanket and build a tent and you lie under it on the rug," he said, "so I don't see you." From our hideout in the tent, we kept still, listening to our little boy rustling like a safari cub. When Sawyer's breath began to ebb and flow more evenly, I plotted our escape in my mind, then blurted out loud, "Uh oh." Sawyer stirred. I whispered the problem in Geoffrey's ear: "I left my glasses on his nightstand." Geoffrey ducked out to rescue my specs. Sawyer rolled over on his pillow, sighed, and smacked his lips. Geoffrey barely made it back into the tent without waking him. If we tried to leave now, we'd risk Sawyer's hearing the creak of floorboards, the doorknob's click, our dog panting in the hallway. We didn't dare. We stayed put. Strewn about the rug, the whole Crayola rainbow, plastic dinosaurs, and hardened crumbs of Play-Doh. Along the rug's perimeter, Sawyer had lined up an assortment of toy cars that belonged to my husband when he was a boy. Geoffrey plucked a tiny metal wagon from the lot and whispered in my ear, "I used to put a peanut in this." He hitched it to an old-fashioned yellow car and towed it over my shoulder. It tickled. He put his hand over my mouth to stifle my laugh. I heard a crayon break under the weight of my back. But Sawyer was breathing deeply now, having drifted into the peaceable hum of sleep. I thought we would ready ourselves to leave. Instead, Geoffrey picked up the stubby end of a green crayon and a ragged piece of construction paper. He drew a hangman hook and the dotted lines of a secret message. I grinned. Geoffrey rolled the crayon toward me so that I could use it to guess a letter. Then I rolled it back to him. I got the first few wrong. One by one, Geoffrey drew a head, a long center line for the body, both legs and a foot. He had the same smirk on his face as when he beats me at tennis — not at all sorry. "Give up?" he mouthed, then filled in the puzzle: You are my sunshine. With the length of my arm, I swept away the mess and snuggled in close.
1 comment:
That is such a sweet story!
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