Playing With Owen

Owen goes through phases when it comes to toys.  For a while it was the Thomas trains, and then it was matchbox cars, and then stuffed animals, and then Pokemon, and for a long time it has been Star Wars.  He's really only seen the 7th (I think?) movie and parts of the original three, but he loves reciting Star Wars facts ad nauseam, and then getting annoyed with me when I can't keep the facts straight.  (For the record, although I have nothing against Star Wars, I am a Star Trek TNG woman, and whereas I can tell you all sorts of interesting tidbits (oh yes, they are interesting!) about Data's neural net, I am rusty when it comes to droids and bounty hunters and millennium falcons and the like.)

This is what things looked like around here for awhile:




And I can't forget the Chewbacca slippers:



A funny thing about Owen's Star Wars play is that he played Star Wars with Posy, whether or not she was aware of this fact.  She was, of course, Commander Posy, and he would go on missions and then check in with said Commander, who was busy sleeping in a nook.  It was very amusing, much more so than the times he started poking a pet with his lightsaber.

But this brings me to a related topic, and that is the topic of playing with one's children.  There are weekends when Owen is perfectly happy playing with his toys, and whereas he will check in with us every now and then, and get help here and there, he is content with solo play.  But then there are times when he cannot play by himself for more than a few minutes and is constantly begging Sean or me to join in a game.  And of course we do, although sometimes -- especially if it is the end of a day -- we do so rather grudgingly.  I don't remember my parents ever getting down on the floor and playing with me, but that is probably because I had two sisters.  If Owen had a sibling, I wouldn't at all feel guilty telling them to go play with each other, but since he doesn't, I do feel guilty in the moments when I just cannot continue with the "floor play," as my friend, Megan, terms it.

Part of the problem for me (although not for Sean, who loves Star Wars and battles and the like), is that playing with Owen usually means doing what he wants to do, and that often involves two bad guys fighting (I asked him once why we always had to be bad guys, and he replied that it was because he's a good guy in real life, so it is fun to pretend), or cars crashing, or bounty hunters looking for bounty -- all things I absolutely did not play as a child myself.  So sometimes I try to redirect:  I'll say I'll play if we can do something with legos, or color, or play with play dough, or do an arts project, or something like that.

But I still feel a bit guilty.  It's not Owen's fault that he is an only child. And I try to remind myself that someday quite soon he is going to want nothing to do with us, and I'll remember fondly and probably wistfully the days when he wanted me to chase him with a cardboard weapon.