My Bird

My bird, my sweet bird, you know, the one outside my office window, just gets sweeter by the day. Early this week, she laid her eggs and has been sitting on them ever since. I read that she'll sit on them for some 30-40 days. What patience....and boredom.

I love this little bird and watching her as she completes the steps necessary for her little babies. Today, I was reading an article, called Fatherhood Milestones, in the Broomfielder magazine, and it has a list of experiences you can either look back on or look forward to in raising our kids. For toddlers they have four listed:

• Be Playful
• Teach Your kids to Ride a Bike
• Read Together
• Join the Party

Each one of these is so true and brings so much joy, memories, and create bonds between parents and kids. I can say say so from experience.

Be Playful - Cole has taught me to relax more, to be silly, to be a little kid myself every once in a while. The same would go for Mr. Wonderful but he was and still is a big kid at heart so it wasn't as dramatic.

Teach Your Kid to Ride a Bike - it was one of our "we'll never forget this for the rest of lives" moments when Cole, confident and ready, said "you can take my training wheels off" and he road down the street without help. I'll always remember that day. How proud we were. Cole's new found freedom. And when he doesn't get to ride his bike to school, he usually always asks when he gets home if he can ride it.

Read Together - we started this very early one - actually, when he was still in my belly. One of the first things Cole loses when he isn't listening or if he is talking back, is his bedtime story, and oh how he cries when that happens. We take trips to the library together and look through all sorts of books, and usually read them all when we get home. He is starting to spell practically every word he sees, on cereral boxes, on signs, on magazines, just about everywhere there are words he is starting to spell them out loud and next you know, he'll be saying the actual words. He asks us how to spell all sorts of words- "Mama, how to do you spell tree? How do you spell dish? How do you spell dinosaurs? How do you spell California? How do you spell bush?" And on that particular day, he was playing with chalk outside and he wrote all the words down. My little genius.

Join the Party - maybe it's just playing with his cars, or building Lincoln Logs, he loves it when we play with him. He loves to show how he can do things. It's these little moments that can last half hour or minute, that live with us forever.

So, back to my bird. I know that Mr. Wonderful and I have created that nurturing nest for Cole. And while it won't take long for these baby birds to fly out of their nest, I also know that the 13 years before Cole out of ours will be here before we know it.

But, first things first, Kindegarden...