January 21, 2006 - Saturday
I just noticed this. It's from Hadley's visit last Monday and it's written in water-soluble maker on the little table in Harry's room. It's a little hard to read here, but on the left it says "Hadley loves Harry." "I love you Harry is pretty clear. Those letters in light blue seem to say "Doody stingck," although Harry claims to not understand what it means. Methinks the children were getting silly at that point. However, the first two messages are quite charming, even if it is reall just the result of a little girl trying out a stereotypical gender role.

On the other hand, Harry seems quite proud of these little messages. He even asked me, after I saw and commented on the writing, "did you see what it says? It says she loves me." I suppose in a couple more years, when he gets into 3rd or 4th grade, that sort of thing will become embarrassing for a little boy. But for now, he's proud of it and, heck, having a friend say that they're happy to be around you can't be a bad thing.

Shortly after we'd found this writing and talked to Harry about it a little, the boys went outside to play in the unseasonably warm weather. I went outside, too, and their mother went off the grocery store. The boys used to go with her on these weekend grocery trips, but they tend to resist that most of the time now. It's rather boring for them, after all, but they do go when there are bottles and cans to recycle. Interestingly, for the entire time mommy was pulling out of the driveway and driving down the roughly 100 yards to the corner of our street before turning out of sight, Harry stood still waving to her. She almost certainly wasn't looking back after initially turning out of the driveway, but Harry dutifully, uncharacteristically stood there waving. Ordinarily, he would have gotten back to playing very quickly like most kids.

I have two thoughts about this little scene: the first is that lately I've been trying to teach Harry about the courtesy of seeing visiting friends to the door and patiently waiting as they get ready and get into their cars. I've told him, "I know this can be boring, waiting around for people to get ready to go, but it's the right thing to do after someone has come to play with you." I told him this same thing when Hadley left last Monday. I even encouraged him to give her a hug, but he seemed uncomfortable with that. Indeed, although hugging Hadley would have been a little bit of a stretch for him, it is just those sorts of things that I see Harry being a little uncomfortable about with Hadley. It was the same at the soccer game and at his birthday party. I could be imagining this, but I kind of think that this oddly (for Harry) demonstrative display waving to mommy may have been some kind of practice for either being more overtly social with Hadley or being more like Hadley, although it's hard to say which it would be.

While mommy was gone, I starting putting together this stand (right) for a new table saw. It turned out to be just the right kind of building project for the boys to help with. It needed only simple carriage bolts, washers, and nuts that could be tightened by hand enought to hold it together (at least initially: I tighened it with a wrench afterward, of course) and the pieces were big so the progress was obvious. It was a classic father son bonding kind of deal.


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