Connecting Over Dinner & a Book

Feels like only yesterday when I had two little babies ...toddlers... then preschoolers shadowing my every moment.  The three of us did everything together.  At the end of those long days, I often read to them at dinner.  I ate quickly.  They didn't.  In fact, they ate so slowly I'd be tempted to just clean off their plates myself so I could say dinner was over.  My reading to them really started as a way to help me sit through those long, drawn out dinner times.

My boys aren't so little anymore.  They're now full fledged school kids hauling backpacks, responsible for homework and juggling their own after school activities.  There's no one dogging my footsteps every waking hour anymore.  Now they can eat faster than me... and on more than one occasion they have finished off my dinner...

But I still read aloud to them after dinner.

Doesn't matter if we're all running in different directions all the live long day.  Because at the end of it, we can sit down to a meal together, catch up with each other and then share a chapter or two of our current read aloud book.

I treasure those together moments.

Even more so because I got a glimpse of the teen years coming on way too fast.  Dinner and reading were over.  Homework finished.  Piano practice checked off the list early.  I asked them what they'd like to do next?  And that night, they decided they needed to have some time to chill out alone in their rooms.... which left me staring at their closed doors and wondering what on earth happened to the little boys who followed me even into the bathroom and then climbed on my lap... as I tried to sit on the toilet.....

Our baby, toddler, preschool years are long behind us now.  I may have started reading to them to keep them eating and to stop myself from picking at their food or wandering away from the dinner table.  But our evening ritual has continued and grown into something really special to me.  It's our time to slow down.  To be together.  To eat together.  And then to go an a little adventure, laugh over funny book characters and quote favorite lines to each other

Dinner and a book.  It's our time to connect.