Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day to all of the fathers out there.  I had a great weekend.  We started it off by getting family photos taken by one of the moms from the elementary school.  She is just starting her business and I had seen some of the work she had done in the past and came highly recommended.  We had the photos taken outside in a beautiful park, so the boys could run around and play in between shots.  The kids behaved and smiled in all of the right places.  I can’t wait to get the pictures back next week.  And just in case you were wondering, none of the photos will end up on AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.    When we got back, I spent the rest of the day working outside. 

I made the first official harvest from the garden yesterday.  The Romaine lettuce was preparing to bolt (forming a seed stalk), so the boys and I cut it down, washed it and bagged it.  We ended up with 6 one gallon freezer bags of lettuce.  We have so much lettuce in the house right now, I don’t know what to do with it all.  We are having salads at every meal and sometimes the salad is the meal.  I never thought that I would ever say something like that, I am not a “salad == meal” kind of person.  The amount of fiber that we are consuming is tremendous.  I have considered converting the shed into a curing house and drying the leaves, like they do with tobacco.  I can sit out on the deck and enjoy a nice pipe of Romaine, but I think I will stick to just eating it for now.  If only I had the forethought of planting a Ranch Dressing Bush or a Crouton Tree, we would be in business.

Since we busted out all of the weekend chores on Saturday, Sunday was truly a day of rest.  Of course, a day of rest would start out by being awakened at 6:49 AM ET by my boys.  They presented me with my cards and my gifts.  I got a chef’s apron and a Toblerone bar.  The latter was a reference to a running joke that I have with my wife that the turd wedges that you find in the baby’s diaper always remind me of a Toblerone bar.  But regardless of what it looks like, it is still pretty tasty. 

We went to church in the morning and then spent the rest of the day at the pool that we had just joined.  It was nice to soak my sore legs and back in the pool all day.  The kids had a blast, even our little 11 month old.  She had a great time in the water with mommy and daddy and laughed every time one of the boys popped out of the water next to her.  She earned the nickname “Richard Swimmins” for the day.

The boys are both timid around water, the same way I was at their age.  Neither one can really swim, so we hung around in the shallow end the entire time.  At one point, I was sitting on the edge of the pool and the boys were playing in front of me.  My 6 YO started to swim out towards the middle of the pool and abruptly stopped, spun around and headed back to the edge.  The look on his face told me something was wrong and I was just about to hop in when he got back to the edge.  Instead of calling or reaching for me, he grabbed his brother by the shoulder and pulled him close.  He began whispering in his ear.  I was beginning to get alarmed.  First of all, I didn’t think my 6 YO knew how to whisper and whenever the two boys get that close, they are usually conspiring to do something stupid. 

They broke apart a few moments later and headed in opposite directions along the wall.  I called to my 7 YO, because I knew he would spill the beans.  The 6 YO would get embarrassed and might start crying if I interrogated him and I didn’t want anything to disturb my calm. 

Me: “What’s going on?”

7 YO: “Oh, nothing, Ashley’s here.”

And that’s when I saw her, a little 6 YO girl from my son’s kindergarten class.  She was swimming with her sister on the other side of the pool.  That’s what caused my youngest son to turn tail and run.  He has admittedly “loved” Ashley for almost six months now.  He even tried calling her on his first day of summer vacation.  But gods forbid he talk to her now, when she is right in front of him.  There is also a rumor that my 7 YO likes or is liked by Ashley’s older sister, but my 7 YO denies it vehemently.  But I guess that is something they also inherited from me.  I sat and watched in amusement while my 6 YO swam around, avoiding even looking in the girls’ direction.  He wouldn’t say hello or even acknowledge that the girls were even there.  I tried coaxing him into going to talk to her, but his face would just turn a brighter shade of red and he would swim away.

My wife and daughter appeared a few minutes later and I explained the situation to her.  We both started working on him to just go say hello to them.   

Me: “Ashley looks like she is a really good swimmer, maybe you should ask her to show you how to swim.”

Wife: “No don’t do that, you’ll sound like a wimp.  Just swim over to her and say, ‘How you doin’?’” (said in a Joey-esqu fashion)

Nice, I am trying to develop him into a sensitive polite gentleman and she wants him to be a Playa’.  The boys eventually did talk to the two sisters.  Hopefully they will become less shy as they get older.  I wanted to explain to them both how in a few years they will be begging for those girls to talk them, but then I realized that I really didn’t want to encourage my boys to start chasing girls just yet.  They are moody enough now without having to deal with all of those emotions.