Time with William

William has always been happy, easy-going, sweet, and sensitive.  Now that Everett and Ashley are away at school all day, and James still takes long naps, William and I have had some good opportunities to do fun things together.

Sometimes his idea of fun and my idea of fun are not very similar.  If William had his way, he would play with cars and trucks and all "things that go" every hour of the day.  He is obsessed, in the best possible way.  

I have struggled to play with cars and trucks.  I've never been very interested in them.  But I am interested in William so I feign interest in the item so I can enjoy his expressive play (and it IS expressive).

But now that William is three, he is old enough to enjoy some simple board games.  Candyland, Snakes and Ladders, Memory--all of these make an almost daily rotation in our schedule.  

Though William never seems to tire of these games, I sometimes find myself counting the minutes until we are done.  Even Joel, who vowed long ago to never cheat on a game to let any of his children win ("They need to learn how to lose, and when they finally beat me it will be worth it," he'd explain), has finagled William's victory in a few of those games.

In short, it has been a challenge to find activities that are mutually enjoyable.  I always default to crafts like painting and collages and building, but William has very little interest.  He'd rather play with cars.  As active or as vehicle-centric as I can make the craft, William can only maintain interest in it for a few minutes.  But a few minutes is better than nothing, so we continue on for the sake of avoiding monotony.

So, I was thrilled when I finally found a craft William could devote a chunk of interest to: egg carton helicopters!

We had a great time putting these together.  He was not interested in coloring or decorating them in any fashion, but he was interested in discussing and assembling the parts.

To prepare for this craft, we read some books about helicopters and learned about some basic differences between models (Wheels or skids?  One rotor or two?  Open tail or metal-encased?).  Where does the pilot sit?  How does it go?  Where is the engine?  What can a helicopter land on?  How does it fly?

William was fascinated by all this information and looked as though he was ready to dive into the pages of our books and begin flying his own amazing machine.

So, building our own helicopters was a great afternoon diversion.  He wanted to make one for everyone in the family and had fun choosing whether to put wheels or skids on each.  It was fun for me to see him so giggly, and it was fun for him to enjoy something new.  I am trying to work on his fine motor skills with him and this was a craft that made us both happy.