Another Day with Liam

 Liam is out of school now and didn’t have any camp or class to go to, so the family stepped in.  We got to have him spend the day with us yesterday.  Luckily Bob came home from Michigan Wednesday, so there were two of us.  In the morning, he took Liam over to church to inspect the new construction work.  When I got home at noon from the Botanical Garden, they were busy attending to the big remote control boat they’ve been building for months now.  Liam said he wasn’t ready for lunch yet.  Bob and Liam have a deep bond over building things and now Liam is especially interested in wood.  He did his 4th grade science project on which kind of wood glue is the strongest.  There is a rhythm to the days Liam spends with us.  First, he does things with Bob and then to take a break, he’ll come upstairs seeking me out and do something with me.  After lunch, I went to my loom where I’ve been weaving his long long strands of finger knitting into a mat.  He likes to stand and inspect what I do as I do it.  He makes suggestions, measures different things.  Yesterday he asked me how old the loom was.  I told him I got it in 1976 and asked him how old it was.  Very quickly he said, “47 years.”  He likes math and is good at it.  Then we played a game of Spite and Malice, a card game passed down through the generations from my mother who used to play it with our kids.  Liam has gotten very good at it and told me, laughing as he won the first game, “Gramma, you made three blunders and gave the game to me.”  Blunders, I like that word and indeed, my play had been sloppy.  Tired of that, he went down to the shop with Grandpa and later when I went to see what they were doing, he was sanding away with an electric sander, making all sorts of noise.  He was pretty happy to tell me what the funny the advertising slogan for the shop vac was (“Our vacuum really sucks.”). I went down to my garden which is in full bloom, a glorious profusion of many colors and began to attend it.  He came out and inspected the garden (he likes to inspect things) and asked me what the sweet peas were.  I told him and he wanted to find the pea pods, which he did and then proceeded to open them and eat them up.  Such a funny boy.  We ended the day by making cookies together.  A day with 10 year old Liam is a pleasure and blessing for both Bob and me.