Puzzled...

Radley has always been a puzzle kid - great attention span and pretty great at putting them together. Probably because he's the first kid and all we did was give him ALL the attention. You know the "I will be in your face doing every thing I can to educate you, listen to you and make sure you love and adore God" kind. The girls? Notsomuch.

But lately they have all been very into puzzles and Landry is insistent on putting them together by herself. (This usually means you put the piece next to where it belongs and she snaps it in.)

I love these kinds of nights. The slowness of the "nothing to do" so we just sit around with 15 puzzles and celebrate each little piece. I cringe at the arguments. I praise the sharing. I smile at the help that they each offer. I laugh at the in betweens. 

I sometimes feel guilty that they don't play more video games. That we don't have a lot of devices and electronics. All of Radley's friends seem to know the ending of every video game out there and he doesn't even know the name. I think I had totally solved the end of SeaQuest on the Atari by the 1st grade. 

But, they are but little once. Right?

Once. We don't get them eager for our attention that long. 

And sometimes it's tiring. Ok, a lot of times it's tiring. I think I tried to sit and read a book for two hours yesterday and got about 5 pages in. The sun was shining and I had convinced myself that they would play outside, entertaining each other, and I would "enjoy the view" with my cold drink, feet propped up and just read and enrich my mind while my heart was being filled by their laughter. 

And now I hear your laughter. 

Between the "help me get on the jump-o-line" and "I need to potty" (which meant getting off of the jump-oline) and "Rad isn't sharing" and "Emmy isn't listening" and... well, 5 pages. 

So, yes... it would be easy and nice to plop them in front of a game, but these nights filled with puzzles and nothing much else, are kind of all we need.