The early daze

I've been reading Richard Ford's Between Them, about his parents and his memories of growing up. Good, but not his best work. Certainly not worth $26 for the slim hardcover.

It got me thinking about the kids' early years, and the function of this blog, which was partly intended to be a scratchpad for the experience of raising them. So I started looking over some of the early posts. Sadly, there wasn't as much direct description of being with the kids as I would have liked. Much of it was just me rambling. Hopefully if I read on into 2005, 2006, 2007, I'll find more about the kids.

Certainly the blog came to late to capture the early memories of Natalie, who was north of 4 by the time I got started. So it missed out on precious things like how when I would read her Green Eggs and Ham, she pretty quickly got so she could fill in the end of every line.

As in:
(Clark) "I do not like" (Natalie) "green eggs and ham,"
(Clark) "I do not like them" (Natalie) "Sam I am!"

She got to this point pretty durned fast. It was beautiful to see.

Recently Graham has been joining me in late afternoon walks, as I try to make sure he does something with his body on any given day. Today we went all the way around the lake for a second time.  Today he told me that, in telling him the story of my own complicated career path, in which I resented my mom pressuring me to become an economist, he had discerned vague pressure from me for him to become an economist. I assured him that I meant to put no pressure on him at all, and told him that it was great he could tell me that (as indeed it is).

The odd thing is that he would have heard that message at all. We have to be very careful in how we communicate with our kids, even when we are just trying to be open.