Our kids are napping and I’m taking advantage of a couple hours of quiet time to finish the last chapter in my novel. I feel eyes on me and look at the door to the bedroom and see my four-year-old son standing there. He always had a hard time napping on my days off. He’d much rather play with Dad then nap.
I tell him he needs to nap. He shakes his head and climbs up on the bed with me. He watches me write for a few minutes and asks if he can use Marathon Girl’s laptop.
“Sure,” I tell him. If he’s not going to nap, he might as well stay busy.
I get Marathon Girl’s laptop and start it up for him. He knows how to login to the kids account we have set up on there and start the games he likes to play so I go back to my writing.
A minute later I feel eyes on me again. I look at him then at the computer screen. He’s not playing games.
“Why aren’t you playing games?” I ask.
“I don’t want to play games,” he says.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to write. I want to write like you.”
I smile and show him how to open Word. He begins “typing” then looks at me for approval.
“You’re writing really good,” I tell him.
He smiles and I return to my book.
A couple minutes later I feel a tug on my sleeve.
“Look,” he says.
I look at the screen. All by himself he’s figured out how to change the font, size, and color of the type. There’s a ton of green and red text of different sizes across the screen.
“Wow. That’s really good,” I tell him.
He smiles.
“What are you writing?” I ask
“A book,” he says.
“What’s it about?”
“I can’t tell you until it’s done.”
I give him a hug and we both go back to writing.
In another 30 minutes I’ll be done with my novel. Then I’ll tell my four-year-old what it’s about.
I hope he’ll tell me what his book’s about too.