Dylan on the fence
This picture was take earlier this month on our hike during our camping trip in Boone, N.C. Despite his smile, Dylan was none too pleased about the hike.
Get a good look now.
School starts next week and Dylan’s due for a haircut this afternoon. He likes it long. I like it long. His mom likes it long.
Unfortunately, Dylan is as interested in combing his hair like I’m interested in a full body wax.
So today, he’ll get a trim.
After returning from a weekend trip to Atlanta to see my parents, I gave Dylan his bath before dinner tonight.
Because of work and being away from home for six weeks earlier this summer, bathtime with Dylan and Ella is something I don’t see much of any more.
But tonight, I was reminded of one of Dylan’s stranger habits.
As he was getting ready to get out of the tub and he had flipped the lever to let his water out, Dylan wouldn’t dry off until he got to talk to “his friend the drain.” I had forgotten the drain was his “friend.”
When the water at the drain began to swirl as it was going out, he said, “See, he’s talking to me.”
Strange.
Dylan is playing AYSO soccer this fall, his second season. His first was this spring.
But this time around, when Brooke signed him up, she signed us both up to be coaches. I wasn’t there. i couldn’t stop it. By the time I was even aware of what had happened, I was committed.
As a child, I played a lot of baseball, organized and not so organized. I played pick-up football. Some basketball. Heck, I even raced bicycles with the kids in the neighborhood.
But I can probably count on my two hands the times in my life I’ve played soccer. And now I’m coaching.
What has she gotten me into?
Join me ... it is your destiny!
Much to my wife’s anguish, in the just longer than five years my son has been alive, I have managed to get him hooked on anything and everything Star Wars. Really, I think she may be upset because at 5, he may have a better grasp on the movies than she does.
Anyway, he asked for anything Star Wars for his birthday. My wife found this cool birthday card with Darth Vader on the front, ad when you open it, it plays the “Imperial March.”
A couple nights ago, as he was winding down, not too long before bedtime, Dylan sat on the floor looking at a Star Wars comic book. But while he turned the pages of the comic book – he can’t read it all yet, so he’s just looking at the pictures – he would open the card beside him on the floor so that the song would play.
Each time the song would play through and finish, he would close the card and open it again, starting the song over.
He kept repeating this, over and over, until he was finished with his comic book, like it was his own little soundtrack.
Dylan’s birthday party was Thursday afternoon. He had a pool party, along with his cousin, whose birthday is like a week from his.
We’ve gotten into the habit of having their parties together so that family won’t have to make two parties in the same week.
Anyway, he got some cool presents … Star Wars men, A Yoda T-shirt, Spider Man walkie talkies, a LeapFrog reading pad thingy, etc. Thanks to all who are helping us spoil him.
One thing he didn’t get … AAA batteries.
Big mistake.
He spent a good part of Friday afternoon broken-hearted because, while I was home with him before I went to work, he wanted me to show him how to use his walkie talkies and his LeapFrog thingy.
No batteries, so no dice. I had no car, so I couldn’t take him to get some. I told him, we’ll simply have to wait. Try that with your 5-year-old.
I don’t blame the people that gave him the gifts. Batteries are expensive, and when you’re picking out the gifts, it’s easy for batteries to slip your mind.
But when your 5-year-old simply doesn’t understand that Daddy doesn’t have the batteries to put in his new favorite toy, it doesn’t matter why you don’t have them.
So I’m making a resolution that from now on, any gift buying I’m involved in will include buying batteries for whatever I get for whichever kid I’m getting it for.
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Raising Two Americans 