My lunch date

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I have the cutest lunch date in town.

George and I have a standing midday mealtime together while his big sister is in preschool those two half-days.  After a busy morning of breakfast, groceries, Target, reading, laundry, more reading, playing outside, cleaning and a much-too-quick phone call with Nana, we are both starving by 11:45am.  So, lunch it is!

During these early beautiful spring days, we’ve been eating in the sunroom together – listening to the birds chirp outside, watching the garbage trucks and school buses go by (a BIG deal in this house), and paying close attention to hear the 12 o’clock freight train whistle in the distance.

George is a surprisingly stimulating lunch date.  His vocabulary is limited (“truck!” “bus!” “ball!” “clock!” – yes, the exclamation points are essential) and he’s just starting to speak in two-word sentences, but I absolutely love our time together.  He lets me talk about anything I would like (or not talk at all – SILENCE, glorious silence!  Not something that is often heard in a house with a three-year-old).  When I do speak, he appears to hang on my every sentence as though he’s genuinely interested in what I am saying.  He’ll do his trademark head nod (“yes” with his entire upper torso, as though he’s  warming up with “Darrin’s Dance Grooves”) to just about any question I ask and always offers me a taste of whatever he’s eating (such a gentleman).  Of course, I am expected to reciprocate in offering him a bite of my lunch, but this usually yields the same results – tasting, spitting out, sour face, head shaking “no,” and back to his own lunch.  Can you blame him? 

These relaxing lunches are over far too quickly for my taste before it is back to the real world of big sisters and big fun.  But George and I both know that come Thursday, we have a date at the same time/same place.