Category: family

My mom watched Max yesterday. Uncle Steve played with him outside in the kiddie pool. Steve’s camera’s not so great (it’s really old). But there’s something familiar about the distorted colors that makes me think of old Kodachrome shots from the 70’s. I must still be sick (yep, still have a fever… lucky me!).

I took Max to the pool by myself last night. Since some little brat blew chunks in the regular pool, we were all relegated to the usually-off-limits lap pool. It was nice being able to swim, but the lap pool is three and a half feet at its shallowest, which means Max can’t touch the bottom and keep breathing. I tried just carrying him around in the water, but that was boring, and Max spent more time sitting on the side of the pool than in it. So, I made him put the floats in his swimsuit (his swimsuit is the coolest – it has little pockets where you can put up to six inflatable tubes). That’s when the fun began. Max got in, and I show him how I could let go of him, and he’d still float. He caught on pretty quickly. He wanted me to tow him around the pool with him on my back. As I did, he’d let go and let me get away from him, giggling like a madman the whole time. After doing that a couple times, I started making him get to me by himself. He kicked his little butt off, let me tell you. He was almost vertical in the water, bicycling his way towards me. It worked!\
After swimming short distances for a little while, Max decided he wanted to jump off the side and have me catch him. Ok, great idea. Yeah, let’s do that. After a couple times of catching him so his head never went under the water, I told him I was moving back and he had a jump REALLY far. After doing that a couple times, I told him that I wasn’t gonna catch him this time, but that I’d make sure he was OK. Again, no sweat. The kid jumps three feet out into the pool, goes under the water, pops right back up and laughs. He laughs like it’s the best ride at the amusement park. He laughs with water dripping down his face and his little legs kicking and it melts my heart.\
After the jumping, he decides he wants to race me across the pool. the lap pool. really, the lap pool. It’s about 20 yards long. We raced five times. He swam the whole way each time by himself. Really. He’s three and a half and he swam over a hundred yards, practically non-stop. And by the end, he was holding his breath, sticking his little head under the water and trying to swim underwater. He held his breath for ten to fifteen seconds each time, and came up sputtering only once or twice. The kid’s a fish, I tell you.\
Max and I spent two hours at the pool. He was still going strong at 8pm, his normal bedtime, when they kicked us out. On top of all the swimming, Max peed in the toilet twice while at the pool. Yeah, he’s three and he’s not potty-trained. He just hasn’t been into it enough to try yet. For some reason though, he’ll pee in the toilet at the pool, which leads me to believe he knows when he has to pee. Maybe it’s the swim diapers… dunno… but he swam! I was so proud of him. He’s so brave and small and beautiful it makes me want to cry. He’s not the little lump we used to leave on a blanket on the floor, fix dinner, and come back to find him happily gurgling along in the same spot. He’s a boy with no fear, a bright mind, and a big heart. He has opinions and thoughts and questions. He’s a joy to be with almost all the time (he gets really ornery when he’s tired, and that’s not so fun).\
I want to preserve times like last night at the pool forever. I’ll keep them in some acrylic vault, in a mylar bag, for a day in the future when it sucks to be his father: after he’s wrecked a car, or stayed out all night or does one of the stupid things teenage boys do. I’ll pull out this perfect memory and remember that the kid who’s just screwed up is the same kid who swam five laps in the big pool, jumped fearlessly into the deep water and told me he loved me on the way home, sopping wet, hair tussled and a big sleepy, sloppy grin on his face.

I hate doing “I’m going to blog about this, really” posts, but I do it enough that you should be used to it by now. I took Max to the pool tonight all by myself. Some little jerk decided to throw up in it, so we were all relegated to the lap pool. The lap pool is three and a half feet deep at its shallowest, so I made Max put the floats in his swimsuit. There’s way more to this story, but needless to say, on only his third trip to the swimming pool, the kid can swim, hold his breath and put his head under the water and will jump off the side of the pool and get himself back up the surface (the floats help, but still, that’s brave for three). I’ll tell you the whole story tomorrow. The kid wore me out… good night!

We went…

to the pool.

How did you know it was my turn to wake up with you this morning? Did you wake up at 6:50AM because you knew it was me? One day, you’ll realize that Sunday mornings are for sleeping in, not for waking up at the buttcrack of dawn and jumping on me. I don’t know about you (ok, I really do), but my imagination doesn’t start working until at least 10:30. Before then, you’re lucky to get a good game of Princess Lamby Gets Saved By Hero Max From Daddy the Badguy.\
I apologize profusely for sucking when we had our big car race on the couch, and that my airplane noises during our dogfight were less than enthusiastic. I hope the fact that I didn’t get upset when you spilled rice krispies all over your chair will help dull some of the pain from my lackluster playing.\
I also hope that you forgive me for not finishing Snow. You were so enraptured with Junkyard Wars, I just couldn’t bring myself to get to the end and find out if the snow melted or not.\
And thank you for accidentally kicking me in the crotch while I was the Badguy. If I were really the Badguy, that would be a perfectly valid move. But, when playing, please only pretend kick Daddy in the nuts. Thanks.\
I hope you’re enjoying the fine programming on Noggin right now. I am definitely enjoying my ice pack and the quiet in the office. I hope you come visit soon.\
Love,\
Daddy

“Why are we people?”\
It’s a simple enough question when you think about at first. But then, the bottom falls out and the answers melt into one another until there is no answer. You can take the religious view, the evolutionary view, or the 3 year-old view. I’ll try to address all of them, and then sum up my confusion at the end:

All of those make sense to me when I look at them under their respective headings. I am very fond of the pants line. But, I believe in all three views. How do I reconcile them?

Now I think I can’t wait for Max to ask that question. I’ll let you know what happens when/if he does.

I just checked the listings and The Wiggles are going to be on Crocodile Hunter tonight. Can you believe it? Is Steve going to feed Dorothy some raw chicken? Feed Jeff to Monty? Let Terri run off with the primary colored lotharios who make such great fruit salad, fruit salad? The dramatic possibilities are too much to bear!! Rest assured, it will be TiVoed and Max and I will hang on every word.

New Pictures!!

Max has discovered some of the joys of yo-yo-ing. Why some? Because he can drop it like the best of them; getting it to come back up is the trick. This problem is compounded by the fact that the string is longer than he is tall (hence him standing on the dining room table). He still loves it and laughs his little head off every time he lets go of the yo-yo and watches it roll down the string towards the floor. Last night, we ended up using the yo-yo as a fishing line. We caught six little fish and made a lovely fish pie out of flour, the fish, carrots, water, eggs and celery (Max and I came up with the ingredient list – he contributed the flour, water, eggs and fish – he’s smart).

He’s so much fun now. He has a great little blooming imagination, a joy for play and is smart enough to come up with and get jokes. He’s devoid of cynicism and almost completely lacking in guile (almost… he tries to be sneaky, but he’s not very good at it yet).

This morning, Max helped me water the flower Jen got for her birthday, and then wanted to take some pictures. Do kids come funner than three and a half? If so, I don’t know if I can take it.

This one’s from Jen:

Heather, Kevin’s younger sister – note I didn’t say little – is starting to have multiple suitors. Max has met one, Jeremy, and has heard about the another one, Paul. Out of the blue, Max said to me, “Do you have a pa?” I said, “Pa? Yes, I have a dad, Grandpa Brian is my dad.” He said emphetically, “Paulllllll.” Then he said , “Jeremy.” I said, “oh, I don’t have a Paul or Jeremey, I have a Kevin. So, no, I don’t have a Paul. I just have your daddy. Paul and Jeremy want to date Heather. But I only date your daddy, Kevin.” It was a funny conversation. But I don’t know how much he got out of it.