Lately my son has really warmed up to daddy. We had a rough spell following the APEC Summit, when I was away for almost two weeks. He was also sick for awhile and only wanted mommy to comfort him. "You want mommy," he would say repeatedly, referring to himself in the second person. Dad was left out in the cold for awhile. However, in the past couple weeks or so he has really shifted his attention to me, which makes me happy as can be. It’s so much easier to raise a child when they want to spend time with you! I’m making the most of my time with him. Even mom agrees that he prefers to play with me if given a choice. As is often the case, mom is seen as the primary caregiver, and dad is seen as the king of fun. I’ll never be as attentive to his needs as his mom is, but I am a lot of fun.
One of my son’s most interesting quirks is his love of the colors blue and green. Not blue. Not green. Blue AND green. His favorite toys are Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and his favorite trains happen to be blue (Gordon) and green (Henry). He always keeps them together as a pair. Lately he’s added Spencer (gray) and Diesel (biege) to the tandem because they’re all about the same size. However, Gordon and Henry are still the standards in his train collection. He carries them together wherever he goes. His love of these two engines has spawned a desire to pair blue and green together in all sorts of interesting combinations. He plays with blue and green play dough. He pairs greenish toys with bluish toys. When we went to a toy store before Christmas, he took a liking to Little Tikes’ B.C. Builders dinosaur toy collection. Which dinosaurs did he choose? The blue one and the green one, of course. When we tried to convince him to settle for one or the other, he wouldn’t stand for it. He had to have both toys (we relented). When we bought him some socks, one pair happened to be blue, one green. Now, every day he mixes those two pairs of socks and runs around the house wearing one blue and one green sock. When you ask him what his favorite color is, he responds enthusiastically, "Blue and green!" Blue and green do have a certain soothing affect when paired together, like sky and land, land and sea, trees and lakes, rivers and mountains. I wonder if he’ll always consider both to be his favorite colors, or if he’ll eventually choose just one. We’ll have to wait to find out.
