A matter of minutes

I know that Lucas, like most kids his age, suffers from some universal-kid form of ADD. One minute he's so excited about playing with his cars, then he ditches it when he sees the rubber stamps at the art table, and so it goes. But I never really knew how each of those short phases last, until now.

Last year Lucas got a little digital watch for his birthday. He wears it occasionally, mostly in the bathtub because he likes to tell me over and over that it's okay if it gets wet because "it's a waterproof watch."

This morning as I was making breakfast he put on his watch. He sat down in the kitchen nook and looked at his watch and announced that it said, "Seven three six". I said, "That means the time is 7:36."

Then less than a minute later, he called out, "Mommy! It's 7:37 now! See!" I went over, trying to mirror his excitement without sounding too sarcastic, with a lot of phrases like, "oh my gosh" and "that's pretty cool".

I went back to minding Lucas' oatmeal, while also emptying the dishwasher and getting my online celeb gossip fix, when all of a sudden Lucas called out again, "Now it's 7:38, this is so cool, I can see the numbers changing."For the first time ever, I got a minute by minute update on the time. He couldn't take his eyes off his watch. I've never seen someone so excited about each minute passing by.

Then at approximately 7:42, the magic wore off. Lucas said, "Mommy can you take off my watch? I'm getting tired of looking at it all the time." I started to explain that you don't have to look at it all the time, that you wear it so if you need to know the time, you can just look at your watch. But then decided to skip it. Instead I said, "Thanks for telling me the time. Now I know it takes me seven minutes to make your oatmeal." He said, "You're welcome."

Seven minutes, that's how long the watch phase lasted. But it was just enough time for me to get breakfast on the table.