dan solo

We rode to the library to read to a golden retriever this afternoon. 

Actually, I rode to the library. Two miles, mostly uphill, with 100 pounds of kid in the trailer behind me, and by the time I got there I was sweating so generously I was almost embarrassed to go inside. But I did, because there she was, Esther the Sweetheart – Essie, her handler called her – and she was waiting for us.

Essie’s a therapy dog – she and her colleagues go to nursing homes, to hospitals, to schools and libraries, and they make themselves available for needful hugging. She and Clifford, her big red friend, were there yesterday out in Chatsworth to offer a sliver of love in a pile of broken glass and steel and lives. But today was not a train wreck. Today was just Read to a Dog day at the Westlake Library, so we rode the two miles – I rode – and Mia read while Max listened in silence. So okay, Read to a Dog and Max day.

Parents weren’t allowed in – the idea, apparently, is to give kids a chance to build confidence by reading to someone other than their parents, even if that someone is a retriever. A napping retriever, I should add – Essie only woke up when Mia was done and I came back to pick up the kids.

No matter. Those kids have been wanting a puppy for years now – they don’t let a dog pass in the park without petting it – or in Mia’s case, barking at it in a vain attempt to communicate. So reading to a dog? For 20 minutes? Even a sleeping dog? Are you kidding?

Heaven.

***

Three hours earlier I was carrying Max on my shoulders and watching Mia lock down the goal box against vicious pressure from a team calling itself the Kickin’ Crabs. It was Mia’s second game in AYSO, and she held them off for a good three minutes before one shot finally made it through, and then another, and then two more, seemingly on the same play.

Good thing they don’t keep score in U-7 Girls AYSO.

The highlight last week came when one of Mia’s teammates got the ball on a breakaway – just her, the ball, and the goalie – but stopped mid-run to wave to her parents. There was nothing quite so spectacular this week, though a big girl on the Crabs got a breakaway of her own and almost scored before her coach reminded her that she was heading in the wrong direction.

No, this week the highlight was Chicken Nuggets afterward with Grandma and Zeyde.

***

Home from the library was easier, the 100 pounds of kid, plus five extra pounds of books, pushing me downhill. We ordered a pizza and watched Singin’ in the Rain. The kids objected – just last night they rented Thumbelina and Balto II: Wolf Quest, and they were eager to watch, but I made them a deal. If they didn’t like Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor, we’d turn it off and they could watch their movies.

An hour into the film, they were standing in front of the television with umbrellas open – Dora and Tink umbrellas, for the record – and twirling, and when O’Connor did “Make ‘Em Laugh,” Max broke into hysterics (“He walked right into that wall!”). I paused it at one point and asked if they wanted their other movies, and they just stared at the frozen screen and waited. But when it was over and I fished for positive reviews, I got none. “I don’t like movies with real people in them,” Mia explained.

And yet as Max climbed into bed after a bite-sized Hershey bar and a date with a toothbrush, he was singing the title song, clear as day.

“What a glorious peelin’…”

***

Tomorrow I think we’ll try to make a volcano out of brown construction paper.

 

 

car talk

We were driving to school – first Max today, because we had to stop by and get grapes for Mia’s Kinderclub party. I was thanking the kids for my Father’s Day – it had been lunch in Malibu with my parents, then Kung Fu Panda, then Chinese food at Lakeview Gardens to stay with a theme. And there was a fabulous card, too, for which I was grateful – “Thank you guys,” I said. “Thank you for the beautiful card you gave me.”

To which Max snorted, “Car? We didn’t give you a car.”

“No no,” I said. “Not car. Card.”

Mia stepped in. “You said car. You said we gave you a car.”

“No, well, I didn’t say that, but anyway, if that’s what you heard, that’s not what I meant to say. I was thanking you for the card you gave me.”

By now, Max was incredulous. “Why would we give you a car? You already have a car.”

Then Mia: “Car-duh,” she spat. “Car-duh. Not car. Daddy, we didn’t give you a car, we gave you a card. Car-duh.”

I gave up. “Okay, sorry,” I said. “Card. You’re right. You didn’t give me a car, you gave me a card. I had that wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry about that. But thank you for the card. Car-duh. Card.”

That seemed to settle things. The backseat got quiet for about a minute. And then, from Max’s seat, very quietly: “Why would we give you a car? Pssh.”

Well, I know what I’m not getting for my birthday.

 

the book of joob

She keeps a journal. It’s in one of those old composition notebooks, the ones with the black and white mottled covers. Sometimes she lets me read it, sometimes she doesn’t, and I always respect her feelings on that. Kills me to do it, because all I want to know in this world is what’s going on in that little head of hers, but I do it all the same. I have to.

Sometimes it’s about what she did over the weekend. More often, it’s about what stickers or books or toys her grandparents bought her. And then there’s this one:

I love my dad.

I love my dad

becus he has no

joob and wen he

has no joob then

he sumtimes can

pic me up from

scool urly.

***

Sunday is Father’s Day – my sixth, incredibly. Each is better than the last, because each day the kids get more magnificent. Couple weeks ago they held a debate on the question of robot poop – Max says they poop cannonballs, but Mia says it’s more like screws and bolts. I think it depends on the robot’s diet. The jury’s out. And Saturday, Max drew a frog and named it Snort, and this is how he explained the name to his sister:

“My frog’s name is snort because he snorted one of his boogers into the ocean. He had a booger that was really good, and he snorted it, and it fell into the water.”

And in fact, there’s a really good booger in the water. See for yourself.

***

Mia learned to tie her shoes this week.

Max ate a 64-ounce clamshell of blueberries watching Caillou.

Max still comes into our bed at night, but not every night.

Max is uncommonly polite. He uses please and thank you like they were Skittles. He also farts a lot, and this makes him laugh. A lot.

Mia’s favorite food is Skittles. I have never given her Skittles.

Max doesn’t like pizza. It has sauce, and he doesn’t like sauce. He also doesn’t like ketchup, or white sauce, or spaghetti with red sauce. The only sauce Max likes is syrup.

And Fig Newtons. Which he described to me as “the thing with the sauce with the bread around it.” He likes Fig Newtons.

Mia and Max only eat the heads off broccoli.

Mia read a whole book in bed tonight. She called me in to tell me about it. Her smile kept the room lit even after I made her turn out the light.

Max is coming around on shorts.

Every night before bath, Max chooses a plastic animal or dinosaur to bring into the tub. And every night, he asks me if that particular animal or dinosaur swims, and if it swims underwater too. Every night, I say yes to both questions.

Max draws dogs. He draws cats. He draws bunnies. He draws mice. Yesterday, he drew a dog chasing a cat. Chasing a bunny. Chasing…no, not a mouse. A ball of yarn. The ball of yarn was chasing the mouse. The mouse was chasing an ant.

Mia refuses to tell me about her day. It’s because it’s her day, not my day. That’s what she told me.

Max still gets tired of walking. I get tired of carrying him.

***

And then there’s this: I got a joob. I’ve been working at it for five months, and right now I’m thrilled, but I’m not.

I’ve not gone to work for five years. I’ve worked, but I’ve not gone to work. I’ve written. And though this job is insanely close to home – close enough that I’ll commute on foot – it’s not at home, which means I can’t watch kids and still work. Which brings with it all sorts of complications involving daycare and after-school care and babysitters and juggling and I don’t know what else. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out soon, though. We’ll have to. I start next month.

It’s good. I’m happy. This is what I’ve been working toward. And it’s as close to a perfect situation as I could have imagined. It’s just.

Well. I like picking her up urly.

 

not a real man

About a year ago, Mia and Sarah were looking at a broken shelf in the pantry, and Mia suggested that we needed a man to come fix it. That’s who fixes things, after all – when the television broke, a man came to fix it, and when the dishwasher broke too. But the shelf I can fix, and Sarah said as much, but Mia wasn’t sure.

“No, Mommy, we need a man to fix it,” she insisted.

“Well, Daddy’s a man,” said my wife, offering a vote of confidence.

“No, Mommy,” Mia said, clearly irritated. “A real man.”

So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised this morning when Max, Mia’s personal acolyte, was telling me about what names are animal names and what names are people names, and I pointed out to him that Max was “a man’s name.”

“No it’s not,” Max said to me. “I’m not a man! I don’t ride a truck.”

Men ride in trucks?

“Yeah. Men ride in trucks or ride in tractors.”

Which…I don’t.

 

portrait of a five-year-old

Mia has started to whistle.

I don’t mean inadvertently, like the way you’d report a fan belt gone awry. “I don’t know what the deal is. She just whistles, usually when it’s cold or when we get up above 60 miles per hour.” Not that way. I mean really whistling. Or really trying, anyway – she’s not quite there yet. Truth be told, it’s a thin whistle – reedy, even – like a bad fan belt on a cold morning. But the fundamentals are there. She just needs to practice.

It’s just the latest leap forward in a summer of leaps. She’s five now, and she’s finally stopped asking which shoe is for which foot. She can get herself into and out of the car seat with no help whatsoever, even if it does take her hours to do it. At the pool, she holds her breath and dunks herself underwater.

It’s amazing to me. It just doesn’t seem like that long ago that she was an infant, small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. Now she dresses herself and throws a ball overhand and puts together jigsaw puzzles. And she reads chapter books – well, we read, but she follows along, sometimes three chapters a night, and she can pick out words if you nudge her to do so.

And she’s thinking, too.

Not that long ago, we were barbecuing, and Mia was laying with her head on Sarah’s lap, looking up at the clouds. I don’t know where their conversation started, but as I passed them with a plate full of corn in my hand, this is what I picked up:

“Did god make the earth?” That’s Mia asking, not Sarah.

“Yep,” says Sarah, because really, what else do you say to a 5-year-old?

“Then I think he’s a giant.”

Which, I mean. It’s good deductive reasoning, right?

And now we’re in mid-July, and in a few weeks Mia will say goodbye to daycare and hello to kindergarten. She gets so excited about it she can’t stand still – she literally dances in place, jumping up and wiggling her bottom with pride at what she’s about to accomplish.

In June, we walked over to the school (it’s about 300 feet from the house) to register her, and they did a pre-screening. She sat at a very short table with one of the kindergarten teachers and identified numbers and letters and colors and shapes while Max and I sat at another very short table around a corner and fought over crayons. They gave her a certificate, as you can see, and she was thrilled, as you can see, and soon my girl will be in elementary school.

Which just makes me shake my head and raise my eyebrows and let out a low, reedy whistle.

 

forgive me father, for i have slacked

There’s just so much I haven’t written. I want to, but I haven’t, and I probably won’t, so this will have to suffice.

I never wrote about Lausanne. I never wrote about the cross-country drive we took in our last week in Switzerland, a drive prompted by Mia’s need to see – and Sarah’s need to show Mia – one last real live castle. So we drove to Lausanne, and then down through Montreaux to Vevey and beyond, to Chateau de Chillon, the 800-year-old castle set hard on Lake Geneva. The castle is gorgeous, as were Sarah’s stories, complete and fabricated memories of where the princesses stood, where they danced, where they slept, where they greeted their people.

The kids loved it, especially Mia, but neither of them loved Chillion as much as they loved Broc, which is where the chocolate is made. That’s why we went there, to see the chocolate get made, and to smell the city, and we did both, and then they left us alone in a room with bad lighting and about 50 pounds of fresh chocolate, with and without cream, and with and without nougat, and with and without milk.

When we left, Mia jumped up and down in the parking lot and told us, “This is the best day of my whole life!” and at five, she may be right.

***

I never wrote about the trip to the wild animal park, a couple weeks earlier, with JY and the kids. It’s a zoo with no walls, and the deer and whatnot roam the same pathways you do without pause, as if they were expecting you. Which of course they were, because you’re the people with the food, and you’re there every day. Max fed a ram, and the ram looked Max in the eye, and I watched the ram. Very closely.

On the way to the park, JY noticed the kids’ shorts and sandals and stared at me, agog, wondering aloud at my foolhardiness. That’s when it occurred to me: we were on our way to a wild animal park. In the rolling, wooded hills. On a hot day. In the spring. Which is high tick season. In maybe the tickiest region on the planet.

I turned and looked at Auxane and Andrielle. Long pants. Closed shoes. And socks…socks pulled over the pant legs.

We didn’t bring home any ticks that day fortunately. But I did get a World’s Greatest Dad trophy.

***

I never wrote about the Monday before we left, after the packers came and took everything, when we walked down to the lake and rented a paddleboat. I’d been waiting all winter for that, and I’ll miss it all summer. Not the paddleboat, per se, but the lake – the chance to do something with it besides fattening its duck population. Sarah sat in the back to make sure Max didn’t take up swimming, and Mia and I sat in front and paddled, and from our lazy vantage point, we watched the paragliders spin in endless circles above our house.

***

Did I write…? No, I never did. I never wrote about Mia’s birthday party. We invited everyone in her class, about a dozen 5-year-olds, maybe more. We invited siblings, too. We even invited the parents to drop off their 5-year-olds and their 5-year-olds’ siblings and just go shopping. And then we gave the kids sweets. And we went to the schoolyard across the street for a treasure hunt, and to slide the slide and spin on the giant rope spinner. There’s a reason I didn’t write about that party. I’m still too tired to write about that party.

***

I didn’t write yet about the marathon we’re running. We’re doing it to honor Leanne, and we’re doing it to raise money for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society, and if you want to help us out, we’d be thrilled.

***

I never wrote about the morning of our flight home, when Max walked up the stairs with a huge smile, his eyes wide and his eyebrows high. “Daddy!” he shouted. “Daddy, Mommy said we can go on the airplane!”

“For real?” I asked. “Today?”

“Yeah!” he said, still shouting. “And it’s so big!”

***

I know I didn’t write about Noel. He’s our neighbor, and he may be the Greatest Neighbor Ever. I know he’s mine.

While we were gone, the couple next door cared for our plants, watched over the house, and took out our trash, and they were wonderful.

While we were gone, Noel came over every day and
• opened the sliders to get some air circulating
• flushed all the toilets
• opened all the faucets
• flipped lights on and off at different hours
• checked the sprinklers to make sure they weren’t geysers
• occasionally opened the doors to the cars to air them out
• opened and shut the refrigerator doors a couple times to air out the empty fridge.

Oh, and on Sundays? He raced the next-door neighbors over to our house for the privilege of taking out the trash.

I know you wish you had a Noel.

***

I never wrote about the 24-hour milk barn.

***

I never wrote about two days at Disneyland for Mia’s 5th birthday, about the singles line that lets me run through the roller coaster twice while Sarah takes the kids on a single spin around the Ferris Wheel. I never wrote about the lunch with the Disney Princesses at Ariel’s Grotto, about the fact that we were chosen from tens of families to be the royal family, and to announce the presence of the princesses to the whole restaurant. I think we were chosen because we were more sophisticated than all those other rubes, but it could also have been random.

I didn’t write about the button Mia got for being a birthday girl, or about the utter elation that followed throughout the day as stranger after stranger wished her a wonderful birthday and asked how old she was. Honest to a fault, she explained carefully that she was four, but that her birthday was on Monday, and that she would be five years old then. Stranger after stranger nodded, and moved on.

***

And I never wrote about Memorial Day weekend, when we walked to the Vons with the kids in a little red wagon. We removed the kids and filled the wagon with groceries – probably 40 pounds of groceries, maybe more – and started walking home in the heat, but Max insisted that the wagon was his to pull. Never mind that the whole contraption surely weighed more than him. He grabbed the handle behind him, put his head down, and leaned into the thing, starting slowly and getting a head of steam and pulling the wagon, all told, at least 70 percent of the way home. At least – I tried to help speed things along, but he threw a fit. The Max wants what the Max wants.

Stubborn kid, right?

That night, we cooked S’mores in the microwave and made brats on the barbecue and slept in the backyard. Sarah and I had a proper tent. Mia had her Barbie castle. And Max slept in the giant ladybug. The dew made us wet, and the air made us cold. And the ground made us sore.

Well, it made me sore, anyway.

***

Wow. That was a long time coming.

 

ahem

Max called out to me the other night in that way he sometimes does, that insistent, impatient, “DADA!” that sounds like a spoiled heiress barking at a hapless underling. “DADA,” he shouts, or sometimes “MAMA,” and then he sits up in bed, and he waits.

Most of the time he doesn’t actually need anything when he does this. Sometimes he asks me to adjust his blanket or refill his water or find his coyote, but mostly I think he wants to be sure of me, to know that out there in the dark, past the sound of his sister’s snoring, the sentry is still on duty.

That was the case the other night. “DADA!” he barked, and when I sat next to him on the bed, he took a drink of water, let out a small cough, flopped back onto his pillow, and fell back to sleep.

I lingered for a moment, waiting for another cough, but none came. It had been a nothing, a throat-clearing after the water, a completely benign thing. He’s not sick, and he’s not getting sick. But it got my head spinning.

For the last six months, a cough has meant one of two things: he’s getting sick, or he’s not getting sick. That’s it. And if he gets sick, big deal – it means some scrambled eggs for breakfast, a little more water to drink, maybe some television and couch-napping and early to bed. It means he stays with me, where he would have been anyway, and we ride it out. Same with Mia – in February, her temperature hit 104, and the only concern we had was that her temperature was at 104.

That sounds obvious. It’s not.

In a week we’ll be back home and things will change. When we’re at home, and I’m at school and Sarah’s at work, then a cough, even one cough, means so much more. If Max is sick, it means keeping him home, which means keeping Sarah home, or maybe getting Mom or Papi to drive out to Westlake by half-past seven to watch him, because I’ve got class and Sarah’s got an early morning meeting. It may mean an appointment with the doctor, and that means even more parent-juggling, and it may mean he needs antibiotics, and it definitely means we have to figure something out for tomorrow, because if he’s got a fever, they won’t let him back into class until he’s free of it for 24 hours. And oh yeah, whatever it is, whatever’s going on with him, we’re pretty sure Mia’s going to get it in three days, because that’s how it works, and this’ll all start over again. If we’re lucky, we’ll avoid it ourselves, but just to be safe I’m drinking a gallon of water a day.

You see? This is how a cough turns into an ulcer.

People keep asking if I’m going to miss Switzerland, and there’s no question I will. I’ll miss the afternoons on the playground chatting with JY and the other moms. I’ll miss the cows up the street and the sheep down the street and the 24-hour milk barn, which I’ll get to, I swear. I’ll miss the lake and the hills and certainly the friends we’ve made. I’ll miss the coffee, and the chocolate, and the cheese. Especially the cheese.

I’ll even miss days like yesterday, when JY and Max and I drove to Alsace Lorraine for lunch – a two-hour ride each way. The drive was beautiful and the weather was perfect and the villages, Eguisheim and Colmar, were stunning, straight out of National Geographic. In fact, everything was lovely until I realized that I’d left my backpack at the restaurant, the backpack that contained one apple, a travel-pack of wipes, some plastic baggies…and my and Max’s passports. Since we were almost back in Zug by the time I figured out what I’d done, we ended up having Sarah watch all four kids at our apartment (Auxane and Andrielle’s mom, Justine, is out of town on business) while JY and I drove back to Alsace to get the bag, two hours there, two hours back. The day started at 9 am and ended past midnight and it involved no small amount of worry and stress, but you know what? It also involved a lovely trip to an absolutely beautiful part of the world with a good friend and a handsome little boy. Two trips, in fact.

I’ll miss that. But I’ll miss stress-free coughs even more. I like what we’ve got here. Sentry duty is so much easier when the stakes are low.

 

not alone

So it’s 2:30 am, last night, and I hear a shuffle. Over Sarah’s shoulder, I see the top of Max’s head rounding the corner from his room. As he approaches, I notice he’s not alone; in his overloaded arms he’s got an elephant, a horse, a puppy, a panther, and another puppy. He drops them onto the bed, on Sarah’s legs.

He shuffles away. I hear rustling next door.

In a minute, he shuffles back. He’s got another armload – this time a kitten, a seal, a coyote and a frog. And a cup of water. He drops them next to the others and climbs over Sarah and into the bed. He needs a boost from Sarah at this point. He arranges the animals around the pillow between my head and his mom’s head, lays down, and goes to sleep.

Normally I take him back to his room, but it just seemed like a lot of work at that point. And anyway, I think he just wanted some company.

 

this is a recording

I haven’t written much lately. The reasons are far from profound. Sarah’s been working some difficult hours at work, and so I’ve spent more time than usual parenting, and Max is napping less, so I’ve had less time during the day to write, and it rained all week, so we spent less time on the playground and more time at home looking for what to do, which inevitably means drawing pictures with Mia and (for) Max. At night, I’ve been making other words, words that pay, or I’ve been talking (and listening) to Sarah, who had a hell of a week, or I’ve been watching old movies borrowed from the library and new TV shows bought from the video store then sold back at a discount the next day. (Since I’m an auslander, every movie costs me 30 francs, but they buy it back for 22 francs when I return it.) (By the way, my five-word review of the first eight episodes of “Lost,” which we plowed through this weekend? “Not awesome, but way, way better than the travel show with the toothy guy on CNN International.”) (I think that’s five words.)

Point being, it was a tiring week.

It wasn’t a bad week, though – Sarah’s hours notwithstanding. We’ve only got about eight weeks left before we put a stamp on the kids and follow them back to California, and I guess I’ve been a bit wistful about the time. In two months I start back with school, and Sarah’s back into a routine, and the kids are back in daycare, and I may not get another chance like this for a long time, maybe ever. I know that. I’m savoring it.

I’m also trying to remember it, even as it happens. That was the point of this blog in the first place – to communicate with you all, but also to keep a record of this trip so that I wouldn’t forget it in a year, or five years, or 20. Or at least so that I wouldn’t forget all of it.

So that’s what I’m thinking about today. Recording. And though I have other things to write about, other things that I will write about, and soon, it’s a good time, right now, while I’m thinking about it, and thinking about them, to take a bit of a verbal snapshot of these kids, even if it’s a blurry shot, and it only captures a small part of them. Because if I don’t, I’ll surely forget, just like I’ve forgotten Max’s first words, or how old Mia was when she first crawled. (I do remember her first step, though – the television was on, and she was drawn to it. So little has changed.)

So anyway. For the record – for my record – this is (a little bit of) how the short people who live with me look and sound and act and are in early March, 2007:

Max speaks with some kind of New York accent. Could be Brooklyn, could be the Bronx, I don’t know, but when he says “Crocodile,” it rhymes with “Popeye Doyle.”

Mia sings on the pot. Loud. And she uses the sink and her knees and the metal toilet paper holder as drums. Sometimes she’s in there for an hour, and she comes out with deep red creases on the back of her legs. This is a problem in the morning when we’re late for school.

The hour. Not the creases.

Mia is slow. Extraordinarily slow. Actually, a better description would be “easily distracted,” but the net effect is the same. I ask her to get her shoes on, and a half hour later she’s sitting near the shoes with a collection of dolls. This, too, is a problem in the morning.

Mia has a bad habit of ignoring me when she doesn’t want to hear what I’m telling her. I have a bad habit of letting this drive me crazy. We’re working on that. Well, I am, anyway.

Mia loves to draw. Could do it all day. She just drew a – well, I’ll let her describe it: “Daddy? This blue stuff here is the ocean, and those orange things are the fishies, and the green stuff is the seaweed, and the yellow thing is the sun, this brown and orange thing is the mountain, and that’s the palm tree, and that purple thing is the seal sunning himself on the rock.”

Mia makes up songs to go with her drawings. Like, “I am a seal and I’m going in the ocean, blub blub blub!” I’d transcribe the music here, but I can’t transcribe music.

Max likes to draw, but he likes it even more when you draw for him: “Daddy, can you make a blue car? Daddy, can you make a blue car? Daddy, can you make a blue car?”

Except it’s more like this: “Daddy, gan you make a ba-lue toar?”

Somebody – I won’t say who – came home from school with bugs in her hair last week, and now I spend the bath hour picking her nits like a Rhesus monkey.

The kids fight over who gets the kitty-cat towel and who gets the butterfly towel.

Max has a tendency to melt down. He doesn’t quite trust his words just yet, so when he gets frustrated, he doesn’t talk, he just gets upset. We’re working on that.

Max has started sleeping without the gate on his bed. We’re a family of big-time bed-sleepers now.

Usually.

Mia and Max have pretty good internal clocks. Most days they sleep from half-past-eight to seven in the morning. Some days, though – like today, for instance – Mia starts singing – loud – at six, and since her bed is just three and a half feet above his bed, they both end up awake and somewhat hyper. That’s when I take them upstairs to draw while I write and Sarah sleeps.

Occasionally, my writing is interrupted by drawings of seals and cars.

At the supermarket, Max pushes a miniature cart whenever I’ll let him. He likes to put the groceries into the cart himself, and the way he does this by raising the items over his head with both hands, then slamming them into the basket like a professional wrestler might.

I do not let Max handle the eggs.

The kids fight over the elevator buttons.

Max’s favorite song is “Wheels on the Bus.” If you ask him for music, he will give you this. On my father’s birthday, three of us sang him “Happy Birthday” in front of the computer. But the really loud one, he was singing “Wheels.”

Mia’s friends are all girls. She’s four. I thought that happened later. I guess not.

Mia loves books. Max loves the library. This is because they have a kids section at the library, and in the kids section, there’s a toy truck.

Max insists on putting on his own pants. He has trouble pulling them over his bum.

Max insists on climbing into his car seat all by himself. No matter how long it takes.

Max insists on climbing stairs and ladders by himself. No matter how precarious.

Max insists on walking everywhere.

Except when he doesn’t. When we get out of the car at Mia’s school, Max immediately announces that we walk too fast, and that he needs to be carried. “You’re too bast for me.” I promise to walk slow, and to hold his hand. He sits down, rolls onto his back, and looks up at me. “You’re too bast for me.”

Max never wants to leave Mia’s classroom. He wants to stay and play with the cars. The only way I can coax him out is by mentioning the fish in the hallway.

Max never wants to leave the fish tank in the hallway. I have to lure him with talk of the library.

Max never wants to leave the library. The only way I can get him to leave is by promising lunch and a nap.

Even the nap is a hard-sell. Some days, the only way I can get him down is to promise him that we’ll pick up Mia as soon as he wakes up. Those days, his last words before closing his eyes are “Go pick up Mia.”

Invariably, he smiles when he says that.

 

uh…good morning, ladies…

Here’s something, as a friend of mine might say.

It’s about 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and Max and I are on the back end of Mia’s school drop-off. This is a few weeks ago, mind you, but the routine is generally the same: I roust Mia out of bed and make breakfast for the two of them. I wrestle Max to the floor and put on his clothes, and I hector Mia into putting on hers. I badger them both into brushing their teeth, and then I finish the job for them myself. I harry them into their shoes, heckle them into their jackets, and hound them into the car, and we set out.

That’s a lot of wheedling, I know. And yes, I used thesaurus.com in writing that graf.

Then we get to school, park, and run to the mudroom, where Max and I stand by and listen to my watch tick as Mia slowly changes out of her jacket and into her “indoor” shoes. We walk Mia to her classroom and say hello to Mrs. Hamilton, and then I persuade Max to leave behind the Matchbox cars in Mia’s class and join me on a stroll past the fish tank and through the old nunnery to the front of the school.

It’s a slow stroll. Slower than the shoe-changing. Max likes the fish tank a lot.

Finally, we’re back outside, on our way to the car. This is a long set-up, I know, but there’s a reason for it. Here we are, it’s been about an hour and a half of me barking orders and pleading and occasionally using a voice that, I’ll concede, can come off a bit churlish, but now the pressure’s off, Mia’s in class, and the only thing left to do is to kill a little time and have some fun. My voice, in other words, is no longer sharp, and my mood is no longer edgy. I’m, you know, relaxed.

So when Max declares a race to the car and breaks into his awkward, straight-armed gallop of a run – ba-bum, ba-bum, go his footsteps, just like a heartbeat – I play along, slouching like Groucho and affecting a phony run just fast enough to stay close behind him.

“I’m gonna beat you, Max!” I tease, breathing down his neck. “I’m gonna beat you to the car! You’d better run, Max! Better run fast, because I’m gonna beat you!”

To which Max responds, in a panicked shriek that belies just how much he loves this, “No, Daddy! Don’t beat me! Don’t beat me Daddy!”…

…just as a group of four moms passes us coming the other way.

So, um, that’s kind of awkward.