Small Childhood Wonders and Mystery

One of my favorite parts of having babies is watching them slowly become aware of their surroundings. That awareness grows to wonder. They find amazement in the little things that we take for granted. A blade of grass. A bird flying overhead. Bubbles. Even the TV remote.

As we grow older, we lose our fascination. I think we're too busy. Our lives are flooded with technology. Everyone says it all the time. And my boys like playing on the iPad and they watch a lot of Wild Kratts and Eliot is unbelievably great at puzzles in Lego games on the Wii. It worries sometimes to see them get so "plugged in," so I try to maintain a balance.

One of my hopes as a parent is to fill up their hearts with memories of an enchanting childhood. I hope to help them hold onto that curiosity and amazement with the world. I must keep that wonder alive as long as possible. I love to watch them interact with the world around them. Of course, going on adventures together helps maintain our bond between the family members. There's so much more to it, though. Children learn through seeing, touching, and experiencing. I see Eliot cup a baby goat's face in his hands, but he's doing more than just having a good time. He's touching on our family's past.

I'm not a scientist by any means, but I try to help them with little experiments when I see opportunities. We collect bugs in the backyard. They help us in the gardens. I bought some geodes for a few dollars off of Amazon and we cracked them together to look at the crystals inside. We collect shells, sandfiddlers, and sea glass at the beach.

Entwined with the attempts to scientifically explain the world stands perhaps an even more intriguing perspective: the mystery all around us. There is so much that cannot be explained, and that's where their exploration and new discoveries take root. As I let the boys run free on the beach or explore a peach orchard, their imaginations grow. Eliot develops storylines about what we're doing or where we are going. He digs in the dirt for dinosaur bones. He is always playing some form of pretend. I try to encourage creativity whenever possible. Growing older, I feel my imagination only decreasing, so I hope to build them up while at a young age and perhaps it will last them a lifetime. In college, I would read literature and hear one of my professors say, "You can't write what you don't know." Maybe if I give them many experiences, they will know many things. And maybe they will be able to write better than I can. One of Eliot's favorite activities is writing stories that I transcribe and he then draws the pictures. Jack is developing storylines with his toys better and better each day. His dinosaurs do more than just fight now. Imagination can encourage abstract thinking, which is of course is important in so many areas of life.

My prayer is that they carry some of this, just some, with them, even if they don't realize it. I hope that they at least grow up and have great memories of us all together.

Creativity has to be grown; it can't be taught.