Not a Fan of 'Growing Up'

...nope, I'm still not liking that my boys will not always be the sweet, loving, careless, adventurous, little ones that they are now.

I'm (slowly) reading a book (because I've picked it up and put it down several times over the last few months) by Edward M. Hallowell, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness...such a very good book...probably in the top 2 or 3 on my "favorites" list, and one I'll probably read and reread several times.  The first quote that got me, in the beginning of the book was

We get about fifteen years with our children of real, at-home, muddy-river, big-dream, go-out-and-play, kiss-me-goodnight, time-is-forever, I'll-never-die childhood.

I read this the first time right around the time that Sam turned five and I realized that we had already gone through a third of that time with Sam

And a few nights ago, I was reading the chapter "Play: The Source of Lifelong Joys".  In it Hallowell talks about children outgrowing their toys (he had a six year old boy and two older children at the time he wrote the book)...and how short-lived the playing with toys stage is (before they move on to electronics and friends and sports, etc.).  He referenced part of an A.A. Milne poem from Now We Are Six called "Forgotten".

Lords of the Nursery

   Wait in a row,

Five on the high wall,

   And four on the low;

Big Kings and Little Kings,

   Brown Bears and Black,

All of them waiting

   Till John comes back. 

Some think that John boy

   Is lost in the wood,

Some say he couldn’t be,

   Some say he could.

Some think that John boy

   Hides on the hill;

Some say he won’t come back,

   Some say he will.

                     

Slowly and slowly

   Dawns the new day . . .

What’s become of John boy?

   No one can say.

Some think that John boy

   Is lost on the hill;

Some say he won’t come back,

   Some say he will. 

What's become of John boy?

   Nothing at all,

He played with his skipping rope,

   He played with his ball.

He ran after butterflies,

   Blue ones and red;

He did a hundred happy things—

   And then went to bed.

This made me think of Sam lying on the floor, with his wooden trains at eye level, driving his trains all over the house, lost in his train world.  I'd never thought about there being an end to that kind of play...and it surely hadn't occurred to me that we were anywhere near the days that Sam's trains are sitting in the train basket wondering where he is.

Sam, playing trains - 15 months old

Sam - 5 years 4 months old