Obsessing

Me and my sometimes obsession

Arin and his current obession

It’s not that a person’s vocabulary is tied directly to their value, but I do love the moment when my seven year old is praying before a meal and he uses “beautiful” correctly in a sentence…twice. I recently dusted off our ancient ornate-looking dictionary because Evan drew a picture for his daily journal and used the words “lego creations” just so he could look up the “c” word in it. Very exciting stuff to me. There are a multitude of reasons I love having my kids with me so much. One of them being encouraging thier vocabulary, and another the things I get to discuss with them at oddball teachable moments.

One such moment with Arin recently combined the two. Arin has sort of an obsessive personality and when he is interested in something it can consume him. This is what happened when he was introduced to the X-men. If you happen to have owned a Klingon dictionary, or have attended a convention wearing the clothing of your other personality you may understand this way of thinking. Arin could talk endlessly to anyone about this one topic. His spare time was rarely spent without his plastic superhero companions.

When I finished my marathon in November I found myself strangely physically attached to my finisher’s medal. It was hard to put down for the next week, and each time I rubbed it my face fell into a dreamy smile. I explained to Arin that I was obsessing over my medal, similar to the way he obsessed over the X-men. I got over the medal after the first week and began leaving it at home. Then one day a few weeks later I spied it again and it filled me with pride. I took it to the car and hung it from the rearview mirror as I was packing kids and snacks into the van. Fifteen minutes into our drive I heard Arin’s voice “Mom, are you obsessing, again?” I laughed and admitted to Arin that he caught me. He loved the attention of me retelling the story to Grandma and Grandpa so much that “obsessing” is now a permanent part of his vocabulary.