My nephew has been keeping me very occupied over the weekend since I arrived Friday afternoon. He seems to have endless reserves of energy and a keen ability to drain me of mine. I don't mind though, we've had a lot of fun and it's all worth while.
This morning I was sitting on the front porch watching the rainforest-covered mountains in the distance and intermittent rain whilst enjoying a coffee when he came over and said, uncle Galen, I love you. Yep, that's enough to help me find extra reserves of energy. I told him I love him too and we had a hug.
I'm not sure if he used that as a ploy to get me to play with him, but if so it worked.
He's a fiend for Lego and I brought some as gifts for him so we went and played Lego, built one of the sets I'd given him. He's very good at building for a kid of not even four years old and I began to teach him how to follow the instructions and introduced concepts like quality control and checking ones work. He loved it as he'd only freestyled until then. All of this will help set him up for more complicated builds in time though, so I took the time to show him how it's done.
We played with the things we built and made up all sorts of stories around them which kept us both occupied for a couple hours.
We also drew a little; my attempt to slow him down a little. You can see some of our results in the image above. I'd like to say that those images that look like an almost four year old drew them were not drawn by me but, alas, they were. I'm not much of an artist folks.
My nephew was telling me what to draw and I was drawing them...A koala climbing the tree, a monkey sitting in the tree, an emu and kangaroo below the tree and Fred the monkey in the car. The giraffe is Kieran, a drawing of a soft toy my nephew has of the same name.
As we drew, we ate snacks; it seems the love of snacks runs in the family, and he'd sing or laugh or tell me stories about things with a serious face, or that of a nutbag. He pulls the funniest faces. We had a good time.
I love kids and especially my niece and nephew. They have such imaginations and help inspire others to do so as well. Things seem so wondrous to them and I love their inquisitiveness. As a man with no children of my own moments like this with my nephew mean a great deal and will stay with me for a long time to come.
I've drawn a few conclusions in the last couple days though: My energy levels are not what they once were, I'm still a child at heart, and I can't bloody draw!
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised so be humble and kind
Any image(s) in this post are my own