reliving childhood

It's been a rainy couple of days, so we've all had a lot of quality time together forced upon us. But surprisingly, no one is too stir-crazy yet. In fact, we've even been enjoying ourselves despite the close quarters. One of the things I love best about being a parent is introducing my kiddo to things I loved as a child, and discovering together new things that we both end up loving. It's exciting to me that we're far enough past the Barney/Sesame Street/Teletubbies stage that we're able to find places where my interests, and Greg's, overlap with James'.

Last night we watched a movie called Castle in the Sky, by Hayao Miyazaki of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke fame. We're becoming big fans of Miyazaki in this house; My Neighbor Totoro is already a favorite of James' and mine. His films are beautifully animated, full of fantasy and adventure -- good fun for the whole family. James and I both enjoyed it a lot, enough to warrant a repeat viewing later this week so that Greg can see it too.

And this afternoon I was able to share with James something I love: we found an illustrated, abridged, young-children's version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the library. Admittedly, I never read this as a child (I read the entire Narnia series for the first time at age 19) but I've always loved children's literature, especially fantasy. Greg, unfortunately, is anti-Narnia, thanks to a laughably horrible BBC version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that we watched once. Maybe the upcoming Disney movie will convert him.

This afternoon the boys are playing with Star Wars legos. (When I say "the boys" I mean Greg and James, since Evan is still too small to do much of anything. And nothing is better than legos at bringing out the boy in Greg. Not that the boy in Greg is ever very hard to find...) Hours of fun for them both, thankfully, since we're expecting to be rained in all weekend. It's nice though, as long as we're stuck indoors, that we're all getting to indulge in childish delights.