Ru, Right Now

I love doing these little posts. They are deceptively hard though. It seems so simple to jot down a fast list but it is actually quite the exercise in slowly down and observing. Its amazing how easy it is to live with people and not really observe them or notice how they are changing and evolving. It takes some real thinking and puzzling and remembering to dig up a nice batch of personal characteristics. I like the sweat involved, its good relational muscle-work.

May we all, notice the ways those we love are growing and changing....and I don't just mean the children. Everyone wants to be seen as alive.

Right now, Ru is like this:

Ru's Favorites

• Daddy's chocolate chip pancakes: His favorite food of all-time at the moment. Its a weekend treat tradition at our house.
• Skateboarding: His current sport of choice. The board and helmet goes everywhere with us in the trunk of the van so that he can whip it out at a moments notice in any store parking lot. He's loving the new skateboard class we found to attend once a week.
• Playing video games: He's really into racing games right now, especially a particular game where you race boats through really vivid terrain. It makes me clutch at my chair arms to watch.
• Competition: He will do almost anything if you can find a way to turn it into either a challenge, a race or a contest. He's a natural athlete psychologically as well physically.
• Pomegranates: If we buy them, he eats them. Suddenly all the pomegranates are gone. Bam!
• Cheeseburgers: Its that pre-teen thing comin' on. I can see it now!
• Comic books: He loves them all, from Archie to Spiderman.
• Snow and ice: He freaks out when all our snow melts and its a party day when it snows again. Its kind of emotional whiplash living in Connecticut in winter for this kid, this however is a good year for him.
• Books on cd: He'll listen by the hour. A and I have both recorded some stories for him and we sometimes get them from the library too. The appetite is bottomless. Reading them himself voraciously is the next hurdle.
• Our chickens: He's the Keeper of the Fowl at our house and he loves to hold the hens and talk to them while he feeds and waters every morning. Love to peek out the kitchen window while I'm getting breakfast and see this gentle piece of him.
• Science: He's my deep outdoors lover. Anything about the world outside will have him hooked.
• Disney's animated Robin Hood: He is quoting little bits of it around the house and its his first pick if a movie is ever suggested.

Ru's Un-Favorites

• Leaving people he loves: He is heartbroken, real tears and genuine misery every time we drive out of his relatives and friend's driveways.
• Soup: I can't kick it. He won't touch the stuff.
• Going to sleep: He'll stay up as late as possible. The boy is a night owl through and through.
• Having Daddy work in California: Ru is a real Daddy's guy and he really hates it that A is working one week a month in another part of the country. Handily, A has planned it so that he is only gone during the five work days and not for any weekend time.
• Zipping his winter coat: I can tell him as many times as I want to but, the boy runs hot and he likes his coat to flap.
• Getting things out of the basement: You know, its a basement. There are things down there.
• Leaving his top shirt button open: He's a straight-laced kind of guy. Every time we go to church I double-check his buttons before we get out because he loves to slyly button up again in the car, chokingly tight, right up to his chin.
• Cooked carrots: I remember not liking them too. Not sure why. They're sweet and crunchy raw and maybe just too perfect from a kid's perspective to be improved upon? I dunno. He hates them.
• Quiet Time: I am iron-fisted about quiet time happening every day and although Ru is too old for napping he still has to spend a quiet hour alone taking a break and he really can't stand it. He's an ultra-extrovert and spending an hour alone in perfect silence is a real exercise when he'd rather be in the middle of a crown laughing loudly and chatting it up.