Just a little patience

No, this is not another Guns N' Roses post, sorry... It's me that needs a little patience, mostly with my youngest son. He is intensely cute, very affectionate and usually pretty well-behaved for a two-year-old. But he is a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of guy, whereas I am interested in getting moving, going forward, getting the next thing done.

Yesterday we went over to the coast to go berry-picking, which involved some walking through fields. I was interested in moving on from the ollallieberries to the strawberries (yum!) whereas he was interested in checking out the puddle around the leaky irrigation system feature. Unlike his older brother, he does not respond to calls of "C'mon! We're all going this way!" and has no fear that he might get left behind. So there he stands, while the older brother and I are hundreds of feet away. I sigh impatiently and call again, then call to my friend to see if she can coax him along. For the millionth time, I think to myself "I can't wait until they're old enough to [insert one of any number of tasks -- keep up, hike with us, get their own beverages -- here]."

Maybe it was the fresh, cool air or the slower, coast-side, agricultural feel, but it hit me that I could be saying that forever, or at least until we're old enough that I'm trying to keep up with them, and instead maybe I should just look at things from a two-year-old's perspective and try to figure out what really is so interesting about that puddle.

It won't be easy for a caffeinated, often half-crazed, to-do-list-obsessed multi-tasker like me, but maybe the start of a month-long vacation is the perfect time for me to make such a resolution and try to stick to it.