The Pretty Rock

I try to be very patient with Grant. I try to make myself pause and realize that, at 4 years old, he sees everything much differently than I do. When he points to something that I might not give a second look to and calls it beautiful - whatever it is - I try to make my adult mind look at it a little different. Adulthood ruins a lot of things that parenthood has the chance to kind of bring back, right? When Grant and I go for walks and he calls it our adventure and pretends things, it reminds of playing in the woods behind my parent's house and all the fun we had in our "forts" back there. I try to re-appreciate things like that because I can see how amazed Grant is by the things he's learning and discovering.

I think I maybe need to work a little harder on that sometimes.

Sunday, Grant and I were getting ready to run some errands. I was getting him in his car seat when he peaked in the cup holder and pulled something out. He held his hand out to me and saw this off-white/yellow colored hard thing in his hand. Paying zero attention to what had to have been a look of pride on his face, my adult mind saw an old piece of string cheese (a snack he occasionally has in the car). I grabbed it, threw it over my shoulder and asked him to get in his seat. He started sobbing. HARD. And then wailing so loud that Husband came out of the house at a sprint thinking that I had to have shut Grant's hand in the door or something.

He was sobbing "It was a pretty rock! It was my pretty rock and I wanted to keep it!" So...not old string cheese. I had forgotten that my mother-in-law had had my car seat Friday & Saturday while Grant spent the night with them. He told us that he picked up the rock while they were at a store and he wanted to keep it. All this while I'm crawling around on the ground looking for the rock. Husband is asking what color it is, I told him a dirty off white. Grant is wailing "Its orange! Its my pretty orange rock." It was honestly heartbreaking, he was so upset.

But Husband saved the day. After a 10-15 minute search of the area where it could have gone over my shoulder, Husband found the rock and Grant's little teary face lit up. And, to be fair, it was kind of orange. He was happy after that and was in the car seat in no time ready to head to Target. Husband was explaining to him that it was an accident and I was apologizing like crazy. Grant said to me "It was an accident, Mama. I'm not mad at you. I love you." Maybe that should have made me feel better but I felt even more horrible after that. He only mentioned it one other time that day and not since then (which is odd because the he is The Boy Who Never Forgets). We ended up having a really great evening together but I had major guilt hanging over me.

The whole time we were looking for the rock, all I could think of was this saying I've seen from time to time:

I know it's not exactly like what happened with Grant, but it was on repeat in my head and there's a good message there. I definitely learned a lesson and I'm going to work harder on my patience.