Summer, Part I

The children continue to get along well. Abe doesn't always smell that great, but Max does not seem to mind. What did we do this summer? It started with Abe deciding to grow his hair long to keep warm in the chilly months of June and July, when it rained every day.

Abe's day care sort of got cancelled all summer because his teacher is from France, so he and Leah hung out and caused and prevented danger, respectively. Abe got himself mobile with the aid of rolling toys and headed for the stairs at every opportunity. Max went to camp and learned to a) play a drum, b) dress up like a clown, and c) sort of swim with a lot of flotation devices attached to him. His teacher told him to spell "clown" on his picture of a clown as "C L A W N," and he will not listen to debate about whether an O might go better there. To 4-year olds, teachers are in charge of spelling.

Max has discovered that, in addition to clowns, he enjoys some me time each day in the bath. He gets this time by floating on his back and knocking on the side of the tub, reveling in the echoey sound of fiberglass being bonked under water. He cannot be disturbed while he is doing this, mostly because he can't hear you, or at least pretends not to. This selective deafness led to a terrifying moment when Abe was doing something dangerous and Leah called for me to help catch him. When we leave Max alone in the tub (something we do very rarely, I assure you) we talk to him the whole time so we know he's alive. So we called to him and, of course, as it was me time, he did not answer. Running into a bathroom in which you have recently bathed a wild, splashing one-year old at the pace you run when you think your kid is drowning: extra dangerous.

But not as dangerous as complications from surgery, and we thought we were tangling with that, too, when Abe busted out the 102 degree monster when we went to NH to visit Sue and Jeff. A tense conversation with the surgeon on call turned comical when he asked if Abe was lethargic and had lost interest in eating. At that moment, he was swiping Max's soup from across the table and eating it with his bare hands. So, no to both. He just had Parent Scare Syndrome, in which kids get a fever and a rash but no other symptoms. Fun! Max decided that he wanted to sleep with Sue and Jeff and got to use Matt Gallup's king size air bed. They were very good natured about it and welcomed him into their room. The adults stayed up late playing Wii. I am an excellent boxer in Wii world, but my arm still hurts.

Next post, on to August.