Puzzle Time

Josh: Do you buy those Melissa & Doug puzzles for Jacob, or yourself?
Monkey Brain: Let’s just call it a win-win.

It’s true, I love me a good puzzle, almost as much as Jacob. I mean, that kid can spend hours building, deconstructing and rebuilding the same dang puzzle, and I’m right there with him.

I love doing puzzles with Jacob for many reasons. First, I just love puzzles, always have. It capitalizes my visual way of thinking, a dance that soothes the savage Monkey Brain. I tend to think in pictures, so any opportunity to bring that type of thinking from the abstract of my mind to the concrete world makes me happy. This is why I also love crosswords and Scrabble.

Second, I love watching Jacob. During the spring and summer, I'd watch him maneuver through the toddler puzzles that have cutouts for each piece, some that came with sound. Over and over he'd line up the puzzle piece with the corresponding picture, and dance to the sound of a yipping Zebra (or roaring lion, etc) when he got it right.

Now we've moved on to floor puzzles, 48 oversized pieces, and I get to join in on the fun. After the first few tries, I have to step back and let him have a go at the puzzle at hand, because he is a pretty quick learner. Watching him do puzzles is a form of meditation. I am in the moment, and it’s like I’m watching the gears of his brain turn. He tries out a few pieces here or there, and then he’ll just light upon one that he has memorized, and I can see the recognition as he puts it into place, the confidence and satisfaction that he gets from getting it right. In those moments I am seeing something magical, as if I am literally watching him grow before my eyes. I feel as proud of his accomplishment as he is, and so happy to bear witness to his developing self.

Finally, this is something that we can do together. Over the last 10 months, a variety of things have taken me away from my son. Morning sickness, which sent me to bed on many afternoon/evenings for the fist half of my pregnancy, the physical tiredness of the last few months when I couldn’t really lift him, the days in the hospital, and the last two weeks of not lifting him at all while being nearly permanently attached to Cody.

And so I ordered up some puzzles, which I’m introducing to Jacob one at a time. I broke out an underwater scene on Friday, and since then we’ve done the “fishy puzzle,” oh, thirty times at least. In my book, this is time well spent. We are not watching Kung Fu Panda, or Madagascar, or Youtube videos of polar bears, although these all have their time and place. I don’t need to be able to run around the house roaring like a monster. I don't need to be able to lift him up to be close to him. I can sit on the floor with my still slightly aching belly, sometimes while feeding a newborn, and reconnect with my older son in joint meditation over a two by three foot puzzle.