Fatherhood

Children love to think and explore. I try to foster my child’s creativity. This morning whilst I was dressing her for school, I noticed she was gazing at our stucco ceiling. I thought to myself that this would be a great opportunity to see how she thinks. I asked her if she saw any pictures on the ceiling. (Because I know I do, but I possess a vivid imagination.)
She said no, and then she gave a few seconds of ponderous thought and suddenly yelled out, “Cheese daddy!” Cheese?? Well, okay then, cheese it is. Where on God’s good green earth she saw cheese really did not matter. What mattered is she took the time (albeit, only a few seconds) and actually contemplated it. I went along with it to illustrate to her what a great job she did. Moreover, her musings were played out at the dinner table one evening.
Since I am the only one at home that has a goatee (thankfully), my daughter would play a game about it. I call it word association, but you can decide what label it falls under.
Let me backtrack for a moment. The game I will explain to you was played for literally months before we could decipher what word she was using, and I found out the word by accident.
She would say to my wife, “Mommy goatee?” And we would say in unison, “No”. Then she would go around the table and asked me if I had a goatee. Not knowing in the beginning what the heck she was saying, I played along and said no. Then I would ask my little girl if she had (Here I used what word she was using that was far removed from goatee) and she would say yes and then would belly laugh. It was her laugh that was funny, not the fact that I was clueless about what she was laughing about.
Then one day, a few months later, I picked her up to put her in the car seat and she felt my goatee and used the word from the game we were playing, and then it dawned on me what she meant.
Sometimes when children first learn words, you cannot correct them or praise them if you have no clue as to the word being said.
I ask her to point to the object or repeat the word. Oftentimes she gets frustrated with me and displays impatience. I think that she thinks I should know what she is talking about. Ah, the virtues of being a parent.
She has other musings. The other day she saw a fake pumpkin in our house. (No, we have not put all of the Halloween stuff back in storage yet.) She told me it was a pumpkin and she told me that I was a pumpkin. I paraphrased it back to her and she told me yes. So that night all she would call me was pumpkin and thought it was funny.
You have to love children and their musings.
On my other blog I speak about my musings. check it out.