Enjoy your me time! Also, I love how you take your son on walks. Maybe I’ll do that with my little guy after Emily starts preschool this fall. It’s novel to think about spending time with just one child when you have more than one. That’s what I’m looking forward to.

I have been keeping up with the nature walks with the baby, too. We have about 6 miles logged for the week so far, including some time playing in a creek and a picnic. We get out 3 or 4 times a week like this. Sometimes she’s in the jogging stroller - more often on my chest in a Bjorn, we make stops for adventures, and the gathering of treasures. We’ll start building more toddling time into it, now that she is able.

I started a tradition on our first walk - I bring home one rock, the size of my foot. We have a growing pile of them - and I hope to make a rock garden or something with them. We’ll be able to go to this collection and reflect on all our walks together. When she’s able to understand - I’ll ask her to pick up a rock the size of her foot on each walk as well.

It’s extraordnary how a few minutes of time to oneself can be so precious. It’s all relative, isn’t it? If you had no kids or other things to keep you busy, time alone could be excruciating. But in the whirlwind of raising a family and being part of larger society often allows for little in the way of discretionary time. The little bits we can scrounge up now and then become golden.

Of course, our kids are out of the house, and the day to day routine is now much slower for us. But I still find the best time of the day for me is just after getting up and having that first cup of coffee with the newspaper before me on the breakfast table. When the weather permits, I sometimes take it all out to our covered patio out back which usually has a soft breeze wafting through it. I can see my garden and one of our hummingbird feeders from that vantage point. There is usually a good deal of activity to watch. I often get through the coffee only to realize I have forgotten about the paper. That’s okay, though.

My wife, Joan, and I often sit out there in the evening as well, sometimes not speaking, just enjoying the stillness or the random noises from the neighborhood. Life’s not all bad.

TLS

There is a junior version called Star Child http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/StarChild.html
and an older kids version called Imagine the Universe http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html
The coolest part is the “Ask an Astrophysicist” which has some good answers to lots basic questions (why is the sky blue) and those really far-out there questions (the kind that I can’t even begin to understand).