Attachment Challenge: Day 1

10 hugs wasn't hard at all.  I like hugging my kids and it was nice to throw in a couple just for good measure.  I have to admit, I usually hug Zane either right after he's had a hard time or when he's done something really well.  There's always a good night hug, but not always a good morning hug and I wasn't even aware of that until today. That will be changed from now on.  I suppose we've always had busy mornings either getting ready for daycare and work or getting ready for school.  I think that's kinda' BS now that it's been brought to my attention, so this morning hug thing... it's sticking around.  :-)

20 minutes doing something fun of Zane's choice... that kinda' sucked.  I figured it would.  Mainly because I'm either bored by most of the things he likes so much or I just hold no interest whatsoever.  Today we built lego guns.  I decided to make it fun for myself by grabbing a handful of random pieces and declaring I would use all of those pieces to make my gun.  It was tough, but also a little fun actually.  I liked the challenge of having to use them all no matter what and I liked the stability that came with not needing to imagine a gun first, but rather just build with what I had until it all went away.  It helped marry my two opposing ways: type A planner and creative free bird.  Usually tough to do that.  Our building ended with a pretend session.  We had a gun store for the war and took turns being the store owner and being the customer.  My guns cost me 16,000.00.  Zane's only cost him 12,500.00.  He tried to tip me, but I refused.  Of course after that we had a big shootout during which neither of our guns actually worked as we sat there shooting nonstop for a minute or two and neither of us fell.  I pointed that out and asked for a refund and he adamantly stated that the gun did work and we shot each other 13 times.  I let him get me good with his rocket launcher and I fell to the floor...  We played for 27 minutes.  It was nice to spend the time with him even though I didn't particularly like what we were doing.

10 minutes of attachment-inducing FUN.  We started off with a staring contest.  I wasn't sure how it'd go since Zane pretty well avoids eye contact all the time.  So, I made it easy to "win".  We could laugh, we could blink, we could even talk, but we HAD to stare at each other's eyes.  We managed to play this for about 3 minutes, which I thought was good and we DID have fun making faces and generally giggling.  Then we tried to play a clapping game, but it's tough for Zane so that didn't last long.  So we played another game where we tried to slap the top of each other's hands.  I'm sure you played it as a child, but I don't know how to adequately explain it, nor do I have a name for it.  Regardless, that was fun and he never got out of hand and too physical.  :-D  Finally, we were both already out of ideas and we still had 6 or so minutes left so I suggested we give each other hand massages.  Zane decided he just wanted me to give HIM a massage.  I figured it still counts so I did.  The deal is he's supposed to reciprocate tomorrow and give me a hand massage.  We'll see... :-P

I noticed today that while I DO play with him and I DO spend time with him, I don't devote a decent amount of time to it at once.  It's more on and off all day and it was pretty cool to JUST connect with him.  We did both things while Stori was sleeping (once during nap and once right after she went in bed for the night) plus we went to the grocery store together this morning.  There was a lot of bonding time and while there were definitely some mishaps-what to eat for dinner, who to clean up toys from the yard, etc-he never crossed the line from complaining to being disrespectful.  So, I'm glad.