bringing dinner back

“I slip in bed when you’re asleep, to hold you close and feel your breath on me. Tomorrow there’ll be so much to do, so tonight I’ll drift in a dream with you.” ~ Dixie Chicks in Lullaby

Pork chops, mac & cheese, green beans, garlic bread, grape juice, a chocolate-moussey thing from Whole Foods, and Madagascar 2 — these are a few of Sawyer's favorite things.

Sawyer is not the squeaky wheel in our family. So I was taken by surprise when he had a small fit at Target Tuesday night. He wasn’t sick, wasn’t tired, nothing remarkable at all had happened. My guess? Noah had been getting a lot of attention lately. Nothing good, but lots of attention. And Sawyer was sick of it. Sick of listening to it, sick of our spending all our times as parents dealing with it.

This realization came at a good time. Clyde’s out of town this week, and Noah was headed to a three-day camp-out with his class. I often tout the virtues of the family meal, but in this case, a few days of one-on-one seemed just what the younger brother needed.

My prescription for this was very simple: time. We had Wednesday and Thursday afternoon and evenings, so I let him plan the agenda. TCBY after school with friends, dinner at a favorite Chinese buffet, sleepovers and reading time in Mom & Dad’s coveted comfy bed, his favorite meal in front of a movie he picked without any input from anyone else (especially his PG-13 obsessed older brother).

Sawyer seems back to himself, just in time for the family to reconnect this evening. I think I enjoyed the time together as much as he needed it, especially snuggling up to go to sleep. Tomorrow there will be so much to do — and two more people to divide my attention among. It’ll be good to have everyone back together. But this week was a good reminder that sometimes family members — moms, dads, kids — all need their own time and their own agenda to feel whole.