This past weekend I once again discovered that special moments often just arise out of nothing without a lot of planning or foresight.  We had this great “date day” planned where my kids, my wife and my mother and father-in-love (and law) were each going to take turns going on special dates.  Unfortunately, as the morning went along we kept finding that our original plans were not going as expected and we had to keep reverting to “plan B”.  Thankfully my son took everything in stride and reacted incredibly well to each plan change we had to make.

One of our planned dates was for my wife and I to take our son to the Home Depot Kids Workshop, which we’ve done at the location near our house multiple times and really enjoy.  However, this time we were at his grandparents’ house and unfortunately their Home Depot and town population were a little bit bigger.  It appeared that we were going to have a half hour or so wait in line before even getting to work on the project.  So we re-routed, took him to the store to buy an inexpensive Lego, and enjoyed building and playing with it together, just the three of us, while our daughter played with “Grammy” and “Papi”.  It was a nice way to adjust and still have a fun date, but we were a little disappointed we didn’t get to use some real tools and build something a little bigger and better.

Thankfully for us my son’s Papi has a great workshop full of tools, spare wood pieces, and a mind that is willing to take on and complete any project.  After some deliberating about what we would make we decided on a birdhouse that (to appease my son’s original idea) could also potentially hold Lego people as well ☺ We set to work: Papi gathering tools, me googling a birdhouse blueprint, and my son anxiously awaiting his turn to help.

Considering how much he had to watch and wait, I was really impressed with his attention span for what we were doing and his excitement and engagement in the building process.  He most definitely took a Lego break for 20-30 minutes during the loud and more “boring” parts, but was also a great listener and really enjoyed seeing the house get built from just a few spare pieces.  The most exciting part for him was the chance to use a new tool he hadn’t used before: the staple gun!  He got to staple the walls and bases together and experience the fun of power tool.  Then, once everything was put together, he got to paint the house in the color of his choice.  It was amazing to see how adept and careful he was with painting and it made me so happy listening to him hum a song while painting…clearly just enjoying every minute of our project.

I enjoyed this so much as it was something special that my son, my father-in-law and I got to do together.  We got to use power tools and see something take shape from our own hands and work.  It was so enjoyable to me to see my son enjoying the process of building and actually being quite good at it as well!  He’s well on his way to being much more handy than his dad, and I really enjoy seeing him get excited about it.

This is fatherhood…