Sunday, October 17, 2010

"Me Have Idea!"

One of my favorite things in the world is when Sam says a complete sentence using one or two words I didn't even knew he knew. For example, on the way to BWI to drop everyone off for their S. Fla. vacay, we got stuck in the morning commute on 395. Sam pointed out the window and said, "Look at the smoke coming out of those smoke stacks." This is but one example. It is happening with astonishing frequency. At least once a day.

Another one of my favorite things that Sam does is have ideas. I know this because he puts his index finger in the air and declares, "Me have idea!" By way of illustration, Elise was agonizing (my word, not her's :) over what pair of shoes to wear with the outfit she had on. From somewhere buried deep within our closet, we hear, "Me have idea!" Sam emerges pulling behind him a pair of Elise's knee-high boots. Great. Now he's a fashionista!

Elise and the boys left Wednesday. Thursday evening, I met some of my classmates (including one who had flown halfway around the world, from New Zealand, for a meeting and several who had passed their Spanish tests) to celebrate. It occurred to me about halfway through the evening that tonight was supposed to be Sam's swim lesson and I became legitimately bummed, because, arguably, it is the most fun thing Sam and I do together all week. We've had three lessons now and I don't exactly know when the instructor actually plans to teach Sam how to swim. I'm not complaining too much. We sing songs. Play the hokey-pokey. I get to throw Sam in the air and when he is wearing his swim trunks that are a tad too big, he gets to show all the parents watching, the lifeguards and the lap swimmers his bare tizu. We even make a train out of pool noodles.

The instructor--this crazed fifty-year old woman who acts like she might have sniffed too much glue in a previous life--does this one activity that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Right in the middle of the lesson, she'll freeze, then begin to look around, her eyes rolling maniacally in their sockets, and then act like she is hearing voices or spirits. "Uh oh...," she'll say in a murmur, still feigning as though divining an approaching typhoon. "I think I hear a storm warning!" She will then proceed to make a ginourmous splash in front of each child as though a depth charge went off.

She did the same thing in Pete's lesson, too, and, without fail, every single kid was crying by the end of the passing 'storm'. I fail to see the logic in an exercise that has as its sole output, the result of making every kid in the class bawl and claw at their parents. Needless to say, when she torpedoed Petey, he was done for the night, despite my best efforts to distract him by singing along with the disco music coming from the water aerobics class.

The only thing Sam and I have done that remotely seems as though it might lead to him actually learning to swim is 'Ring Around the Rosey'. When we "all fall down", I dunk 'em. At first, she wanted me to blow in Sam's face, then dunk him. To this I thought, "This kid is almost 3. I'm not going to fool him into holding his breath by blowing in his face. He's way too smart for that. More likely, he would look at me and go, 'Daddy, you have stinky breath.'"

(Yes, I have a beer after work and before swim lessons. Is that bad??)

Sam has gotten into the unfortunate habit of climbing into our bed most mornings somewhere between the hours of 3:30 and 5. Most times, he seems legitimately frightened, so it's hard to turn him away. Elise said one morning he even breathed the word, "Snakes". Which if I had heard that I might have been looking for someone's bed to crawl into, too.

It's really only a problem when he decides to sleep perpendicular which is more often than not. Sometimes, he strokes my arm. I don't know if he does this consciously or if he does it in some sort of half-sleep trance. Sometimes, it tickles, sometimes, it's just annoying and sometimes, it's endearing...comforting almost. Every time I try to put myself in his place. It's comforting to me to think that maybe he derives comfort from it. I wonder, then, if he will remember doing this. If he will have memories of his dad's arm in bed.

Some mornings, I feel less compassionate and crane him back into his own bed, resting my head on the bean bag chair and spreading out in the floor next to him. I don't do a lot of reading of parenting how-to's, but I distinctly remember reading once (perhaps, before Sam was even born, not imagining I could even have this problem or that this problem seemed so far off in the distant future) that it was better to sleep next to their bed or in their bed than to allow them to sleep in their parents' bed. The person who wrote this little piece of advice didn't factor in an immensely curious 9-month old peering over the top rail of the crib down at you at 4 in the morning wondering what the heck was going on.

Yesterday, I ran in the Baltimore Marathon. I joined up with some classmates to run the relay. It was only the second time I had been back to Baltimore after I graduated from college. Though similar, I had forgotten how much older the city's architecture was than D.C.'s. It was cool. Cold for me. Worse when the wind picked up around 9. I ran the anchor for one team, a 7.3 mile leg that started somewhere on the east side of the city that looked straight out of Cops. Mike who is going to Brasilia, as well ran the anchor for the other team, and the TWO AND A HALF HOURS we had to wait before we ran gave us the opportunity to discuss life, language learning and Brazilian politics.

I was pathetically out-of-shape, but had a blast. The crowds were, in many places, just as good as NYC. At the start of the race, a skydiver leading a trail of red smoke, flew the American flag to the starting line.




The only thing I wished was that Sam had been there to see it. Though, I wouldn't want to give him anymore ideas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If Sam had seen it, he might first have let you know that the flag was "my country's flag" and then imagined how he'd like to fly like that!

--Nanny