Book Smarts

After dinner things can get difficult. Especially if only one of us parents is at home. Cleaning up from dinner and getting Kiernan ready for bed is a dizzying process. He is so quick now; he can disappear in a moment. And he's too curious and good at climbing to let him get out of our sight for too long. I think he understands our trepidation in this regard, for often as soon as he does get out of sight, he goes silent, like a submarine. I wish there was some kind of parental sonar available for moments like that.

The other night I had to get the bath ready after dinner on a night when Wendy has to teach late. Kiernan had just been released from his seat at the dinner table and was ready to play. (The basic fact any parent of a toddler knows is that as the toddler gets more tired, he gets more active, more wound up. Meanwhile his parents are asleep on their feet.)

I sprinted into the bathroom to start the bath process, figuring I would do all the little tasks--rinsing out the tub, putting down fresh towels, getting a clean diaper and pajamas for afterward--in bursts. I'd run into the bathroom, get his bath toys out, then run back into the family room to make sure Kiernan had not climbed up onto the window sill. Then I'd dash back in, rinse the tub, and hurry back out to make sure he wasn't drawing on the walls. Every second Kiernan is out of my sight when we're alone is like the speed round on some game show. A huge digital timer pops up in my mind and wackily ominous music plays in my ears. I know I'd better get back out to him before that timer reaches thirty seconds or I'll be gonged out as a parent.

On this night, Kiernan made my job easy. He climbed up onto the reading chair and opened a book. He's been doing this more and more lately. Most of the time he still wants us to read to him, but time to time, especially when we are about another task, he will go and open a book and page through it himself. These are wonderful moments, so wonderful that they can become counterproductive. There are times I'm trying to do the dishes and he will just be sitting in his room, reading a book. All I want to do is watch him from outside the room, spy on his little moment of beautiful independence.

He's such a clever little guy. A budding intellectual, I'm sure of it.

Oh...I suppose I should mention what happened right after this picture. As I prepared to fill the tub, he followed me into the bathroom and tossed the book he had been reading into the tub.

Intellectual. Indeed.