Maybe… But I also think it’s more complicated than that. Our job as parents is to teach our kids how to be adults. So in every experience, we should be looking for the learning opportunity and how to make it real to our kids.

A romance thread at Sherry the Redhead Riter’s “BlogNTweet” forum reminded me of this story. Sherry asked how often we date.

Now, of course, I don’t date, because my Beloved (formerly “the Missus”), she doesn’t let me date. (It’s probably better that way.)

But we do “date” each other, occasionally… Well…

We used to date, even if we didn’t call it “dating.” For example, when we first got married, we moved into a tiny, third-floor, attic apartment. I worked down the street, and my Beloved was still finishing up her college education. (In fact, our wedding date we chose because it was during a break from classes, which gave us a couple weeks for a short honeymoon.) We had plenty of time during our off-hours to hang out together, spend time with friends, do chores together, or whatever. We used to go grocery shopping together every week, and then we’d carry all those bags up all those stairs. We had to do the laundry at the laundromat, so every week, we loaded up the car with our dirties and drove across town to the “good” laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we walked across the parking lot and got a bite to eat at Burger King. Not fancy, but it was special, and these memories I now look back on fondly.

Then we had kids.

The Little One was commissioned by one of her friends to draw pictures for a book about how to grow flowers. My first question was, of course, “How can you draw pictures for a book that hasn’t been written yet?”

That was the Little One’s question, too. But she drew the pictures, and explained each one to me. And I thought that made a wonderful little sequence all by itself.

So I scanned the pictures and am posting them here, with the Little One’s words.

Enjoy! -TimK