The Birds and the Crickets No comments yet

This past Saturday, Ian and I went camping in our backyard. This translates to simply sleeping in a tent, but Ian didn’t know the difference.

Kelly thought of the idea in the spring. I asked to borrow my mother’s tent, and it’d been sitting in our basement – expectantly – for a couple months now. I’d been waiting for the weather to warm; with recent heat indices in the 100s, I figured that it can’t get much warmer.

I raised the tent in what I thought would be the most comfortable spot in our backyard; I soon resigned myself to thinking, ‘Well, at least we’re close to the backdoor, if this thing backfires.’ There’s a reason our backyard isn’t used as a campground.

I don’t know what reaction I was expecting when I brought Ian to see the tent. I didn’t think he quite understood the concept of sleeping outside, in a tent, or if he really knew what a tent was. He pointed and said, ‘Tent.’ Okay, then.

We laid a blanket on the floor, and his sleeping bag on top of that. ‘See, we’re going to sleep here tonight. Sound like fun?’ I asked. Ian lay on the sleeping bag, hands behind his head – the standard sleeping position.

It was then I realized that Ian’s bedtime is eight o’clock. Mine isn’t much later, but it is later, and of course the sun doesn’t set until later than that. This should be interesting.

Hours later, after Ian’s bath, I collected our supplies: water bottle, lantern, books, pillow, booklight, sheet, alarm clock (mobile phone), fuzzy cow, and anti-bumpy-ground hammer. We kissed Mommy goodnight, and went to our tent.

Surprisingly, Ian went right to his sleeping bag and lay down. Also unsurprisingly, he then found the hammer. ‘Mammer! Mammer!’

Admittedly, I made the temptation worse by banging lumps into the ground – whacking things with a hammer will always be fun – but eventually I managed to distract him with Thomas and the Big, Big Bridge.

We followed Thomas with Where the Wild Things Are, and The Very Lonely Firefly. With each page, Ian’s eyelids dropped lower and lower, and his hand crept to his hair, twirling.

We said our bedtime prayers, kissed each other goodnight – and I turned away to read my book. Whoops.

‘Book! Daddy? Book!’ I closed my book; he started to cry.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘No nigh-nigh. No. No.’

‘Are you tired?’ A nod. ‘Do you want to sleep?’ A shaken head. ‘Do you want to sleep on Daddy’s pillow? You can use my pillow.’ He crawls over to me, and curls up on my pillow. I turned over, and started to drift to sleep.

Though you can’t call our yard a campground, my landscaping skills are such that we’re well on our way to becoming a forest preserve. We have lots of bugs. The crickets started chirping, and I heard Ian stir.

‘Bird! Bird?’

‘No, honey. Those are crickets. They’re bugs.’

‘Bug!’

‘Right. Bug.’ I lay on my back, and closed my eyes.

A few minutes later, I felt a hand crawl from my shoulders, to my neck, to my hair. Twirl.

Mobile Rage No comments yet

Ian’s always loved music; for a while, he was even fascinated by James Brown. Okay – he laughed whenever I sang ‘baby, baby, baaaaaby!’. Still does.

Some time ago, my sister gave him a mobile phone toy, which can record and play a short message. Since the record button is on the side, large and in plain view of Ian’s button-loving fingers, it didn’t take him long to erase the loving message recorded by my sister and mother.

So I gave him a new message:

‘Baby, baby, baaaaaby!’

Each time he’d play the message, Ian would giggle and laugh. His eyes would grow wide, he would point at me and say, ‘Daddy!’

I’d forgotten about the message until last night, when Ian dug the phone from the unused depths of his toy box. He quickly deleted the message.

Then I remembered that my son could talk. (Sometimes I forget things like that. It’s worse when I forget that he can hear and, worser, remember, and, worsest, repeat.)

I pressed ‘record’, and held the phone to his mouth. He leaned toward the phone, smiled, and said…something. I pressed ‘play’, and Ian giggled when he heard himself coming from the phone. Then he deleted the message.

We tried again. And again. And again. Delete. Delete. Delete.

Finally he said another something which sounded like ‘Beee veee!’. TV, perhaps? When I played the recording, Ian grabbed the phone from my hand and yelled back at it, ‘Beee veee!’ He pressed ‘play’, and this time shook with the effort of yelling back at the phone.

Kelly and I raised our eyebrows at each other.

Ian played the message again, and his fingers grew white as he gripped the phone in his hands. He screamed, ‘Beeee veeeeeeeee!’

Ian was stuck in a loop. Maybe it was the excitement of hearing himself, or maybe he really agreed with what he’d said. Or maybe he was jealous of the phone for stealing his idea. I have no clue; but rarely had I seen such a strong emotional response from my son – and this was a toy! It was almost like a mindless rage, except that he didn’t seem angry. He didn’t seem upset at all, just really, really excited. A Little Tikes berserker.

Eventually he calmed down and forgot about the phone. But, frankly, I’m a little scared of my son.

Wakey, Wakey! No comments yet

I was sick on Father’s Day. It’s my fault – Ian also has a cold, and I made fun of the way he was talking. That’s just bad mojo.

I didn’t fall asleep until about 3:30 the night before, and so three hours later decided to skip early-service choir. At 8:30, Kelly had left, and I started to hear the warning signs of Ian’s emergence: singing, talking, and various thumping sounds which indicate either Ian’s jumping in his crib, or the previous night’s book(s) hitting the wall and/or floor.

It’s never a good idea to have a two-year-old wandering loose while you’re in the shower, so I shuffled toward the bathroom before getting Ian from his room.

CREAK! (We have hard-wood floors.) Ian’s singing stops, and he pauses. ‘Daddy? Daddy! Daaaaaady!’ Busted – he knows I’m there.

Before he was so articulate, I would’ve left Ian in his room until I’d finished my morning ablution. We can usually count on 20 minutes or so of self-entertainment before Ian really needs our attention. But something struck me in the way he said my name; I just couldn’t resist the call.

It wasn’t that I feared a melt-down. And, as often can happen, I didn’t sigh and roll my eyes, or resignedly hunch my shoulders as I made my way to Ian’s door. My son wanted to see me, and didn’t care that I was sick or had only a few hours’ sleep. And I wanted to see him, too.

So I opened the door.

Ian jumped to his feet, and shouted, ‘Daddy!’ I gave him a hug, and explained that I needed to shower, but that I’d be right back (You have to use the phrase ‘right back’, or else he panics.). I gave him a few books and turned on the radio – five minutes later, I’m rinising my hair, and he and I are shouting back and forth at each other:

‘Do bah, do bah, vah vah vah vah vvvvvvvvvv!’

‘Blah blah, bloo blee dah!’

‘Bye bye bye bye bye bye!’

Maybe it’s my fault we only understand half of what the kid says.

A year ago, Ian didn’t call me ‘daddy’, and he’d cry to get our attention in the morning. Now he’s politely asking for my attention, and helping me get dressed.