As Ever, On the Cusp of Transition

I should treasure this day for the more fleeting moments of childhood that adorn calendars on the theme of innocence or some such attribute of early youth. The sight of him stopping to smell a neighbour's flowers as the thunderclouds loom and darken. His fascination with the spores of a dandelion as he sends them into flight. The translucent down on his upper arms as I put sunscreen on his arms. These are all things that we try to convince ourselves that we saw and treasured, but there is the risk that we have a template of our child's growth and experiences that we assume conforms to a catalogue or a parenting magazine rather than be mindful and conscious of them as the occur out of the corner of our eye.  Today I can assure myself that I did indeed take note of them, and magnified those moments.

There was much today that made me note that those innocent explorations and discoveries will pass. The cool years, much like those thunderheads, seem to loom. With Gabriel at 4 1/2, I may be getting ahead of myself but it is hard to gauge how precocious each generation of kids is actually becoming. That aside, I'm conscious of how my earliest memories take me back to age 5 and also noticing the ways that Gabriel is asserting himself more and expressing his wishes.  I get the sense of the quest that will shape the next decade of his life as he seeks friends and acquaintances to fill the ineffable void that only a sibling can fill. There are also the times when he wants to play with his mother or I and we fill the time as well as we can - ever, in my case, conscious of playing in a way that gives him the lead and lets him set the rules and the standards of mastery.

Today, on a Saturday morning, the challenge was to get him to listen and as a result of that challenge it took him about three hours to get out of his pyjamas and dressed for the day. The carrot was that I'd play with him when he was ready for the day. Despite that, the hours drifted by and he only got dressed when he was ready to go out late in the morning while I mentally checked off the moments that we were setting aside in exchange for a stand-off that may have ultimately been about redefining independence or influence over one's day.

As for Gabriel, he has made his expectations of me clearer and clearer. Whenever he makes an extended visit to the toilet he expects two books to be read to him, even if their length leaves his dangling legs asleep and piercing him with pins and needles before the second "happily ever after" is checked off. This morning I was in the middle of something far less important and he called out "I've been waiting," in his effort to nudge me to set things aside and read Charlie Brown while perched on the side of the bathtub.

For all the sense of transition that the day posed, it is a normal one where the poignant glimpses are too brief and too easily overlooked.  Instead, the negotiation between two wills becomes the highlight - the dramatic highlight stripped of any of the gentle sense of passage or childhood that came with those more photogenic moments. As he sits for a calm moment with his first-ever bowl of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream cooling his stomach, and I brace myself for the task of assessing the ROHSI (return on housespace investment) of the toys he doesn't think he's outgrown, I want to take a moment to attach the same appreciation of the moment as I have to seeing him become more expert with the camera. He's not growing up in every way at every moment, just a few ways at a time.

The Lad Unplugs for Summer

For the second time in the last four days, my little showman and chatter-upper extraordinaire has sought solitude. He has made a clear effort to excuse himself and get some quiet time to decompress or just chill.

On Sunday, he sat by himself in the Star Wars camp chair that he has in his room and tonight he flopped into bed, each time plowing through book after book for a while to find some quiet time. He has done it before and it has always been good to know that he has identified books and time with them as a refuge. It was the end of the day and there was some comfort in what he surveyed in each book, even though he is not up to reading on his won yet.

There is the sense that things are a little off of late.  Apart from being a little hard to induce into listening to dear old mom and dad, he confessed yesterday to feeling tired and angry because he did not have the chance to nap during daycare yesterday. Naps, however, have not been part of his routine since January. He also said he was a little angry a while back because his hair was too long and he wanted to have it shorter - an aggravation that he might regret us accommodating if we give him a cut as aggressive as he wishes.

Tonight as he lay in bed looking through a Dr. Seuss anthology and asking that the music in the living room be turned off, his supper barely touched it was a reminder that summer has thrown him for a loop. In my own instance, recall the discombobulation that comes with the long days that spike one level of energy with the extended daylight and erodes the sleep that is just as important for the regulation that it brings. He struggles with it, but the quiet time with the books is a sign that he has a strategy for dealing with it.

The strategy and his willingness to acknowledge when he is angry are blessings that I cannot cite from my own childhood. Perhaps my parents would be more capable of citing this than I could in retrospection. Still, his willingness to drop out for a while and cut off the stimulation is, for an extrovert, a knack that I am quite happy to see.

As he came out of that quiet time to proceed with the rituals of bed time there was a burst of energy and foolishness, but it faded to calm as he went through the brushing of teeth and tongue, his vitamins and the two bedtime books I read him.  Summer will probably sustain the alternation between suppertime listlessness and childish chaos for a few weeks but I am thrilled to see that he can cope with it from time to time.

Now, if I can just get him to reshelve his books.

The Discovery of Calm

For about a month now I have been trying to figure out an option to my overwrought urgency whenever Gabriel is on the verge of endangering himself. Usually it is nothing more than an attempt to keep him from wandering off a berm by the side of the road and into traffic. I will begrudge the admission that I might let paranoia get the best of me when it comes to Gabriel's well-being.

Another inner dialogue that I have been having of late surrounds my tendency to postpone Gabriel squirrel away a moment to myself before giving him my time. It is a bad habit, even though it is nothing more than me saying, "Let me get my glasses," when he asks me to read, or a chore of some sort I want to do first. I have made the vow to not blow him off anymore. May be not quite anymore but nudge that up the requisite six or seven dozen percentage points that are easily in range.

And so those two things converge...

Music class is finished and we are looking at a 15-minute wait for our bus. Gabriel normally fills the time in the best ways he can dawdling through the garbage, balancing himself precariously on slabs of concrete and exploring whatever the landscape might provide - a range of activities that empties my quiver of "Stops," "Come here's" and "Look out's" that I try to deploy in the face of preschool curiosity and boredom-busting. Impact: zero.

On this occasion, though, I've taken a more relaxed approach. I'm still immersed in a novel -- Andrezej Stasiuk's Dukla a jaw-dropping novel of breathtaking imagery and writing, by the way. The novel is just a diversion for a deliberately relaxed vigilance.  Gabriel does his thing and I keep my attention divided between him and the book. Given the chance to utterly endanger himself in the face of my restrained silence, he does not. He diverts himself with ryegrass or indian grass (I believe), which he yanks out of the ground and stacks.

"Can you help me?"

My cue.

I put the book aside and join him, without delay, taking directions on how he wants me to proceed as we address the stack he is building. I show him how to strip the spikelets - those little bits on the end that evoke the thought of bran or wheat - off the stalk of grass and add them to the pile. I offer to take direction from him and determine if a grass with a coarser, larger set of spikelets would suit his purposes for his pile or construction of grass.  We passed our block of time in this fashion and when the bus arrived I reminded him to pick up the toy truck he insisted on toting along throughout our Saturday.

And I learn to lay off and ease my vigilance to something more detached. I give Gabriel a little more room to roam and more independence and I get a little more calm (and reading) to myself. In that moment, I get the calm island that I have, to this point, failed to squirrel away to myself time and time again. Control relinquished and a balance between father and son is struck as rarely before.

Instead of Anger

Once again at daycare, I caught a more stern countenance from the staff as I arrived to pick my son up at the end of the day.  There is an element of performance or ostentation to the communications and the most important or obvious part of the dialogue at this point communicates to me, "Something's up," or "We didn't have a good day." I brace myself and call him over as I'm told there is a report for me to sign. I review the report and add my ink in my assigned task. My face is all scowls and furrows as I shed all desire to nudge in an additional few minutes of play time before we roam home.

He has bitten one of his classmates. I have edged toward livid but know that a rant is not going to get me anywhere. I still approach the border of rant, with the litany of the base questions that get me through the walk home. Does Mom bite you? Do I bite you? How would you like it if N bit you? I dread writing them down again for their utter lack of originality or constructiveness, but that is what I was left resorting to.  From there I get a sense of needing a different approach, a strategy that will give him a different approach or outlet rather than urging greater and greater levels of self-control.

The conversation turns and we get into the details of what happened, which I already gathered from the report. Earlier on in the day, he bit a girl in a fight over a spoon. For clarity and context I have to add -- despite it making me sound like a 4-year-old -- that he had it first. For whatever reason he was expected to give the spoon over and in the escalation over said spoon, he bit the girl. The conversation lead to the topic of sharing, but it was clear to me that sharing was not quite be what I would be encouraging. In reality it would be capitulation that I would be insisting upon: keep giving you her her way and... well... she'll walk all... over you. Everyone would. 

No Gabriel, sharing is a little more complicated than you'd like or hope it to be. Your conflict-averse father knows that all too well at his age.

By the time we got home my mind was onto the topic of what he ought to be doing.  I ushered him to his spot at the kitchen table and brought out the green plastic IKEA spoon that is core to his breakfast rituals - green being his favourite colour.  I gave him the spoon and tried to role play what happened this morning. He didn't play his role with the emotion that he had in the morning. It was loosely gripped and it was easy for me to pluck it out of his relaxed fist rather than take him the brink of the conflict he was in prior to the bite.  I never quite got him to act it out as vividly as I would have liked, but I did make the case that it was time to inquire when something was leading to conflict or disrespecting his boundaries.  (The boundaries conversation will be for another day.) I tried to instill in him the question, "Why are you doing that?"

In the role play, however, Gabriel didn't abstract well enough to pose the question to me. Instead he felt compelled to answer it and he never quite got around to asking it.  We discussed it again when my wife got home and tried to coach him on using the question throughout the evening and we will do it over the coming days and weeks as well. Hopefully he will be able to employ it and make the effort to defuse a situation before it gets to the point that it did in daycare yesterday morning. My hope is that the question will bring about another level of consciousness on the part of both protagonists in this rite of childhood. I would dread Gabriel merely receiving the response, "Because I want it," and flounder with the challenge of coming up with the appropriate follow-up question. Perhaps the question would give his friend the chance to ask herself the same thing or give him the time to tell her to get another spoon elsewhere rather than insist on the one he had.

On the topic of daycare, I hope this is not too jarring a transition, last night I wrote our daycare to inform them of our desire to keep Gabriel there for another year to ensure he is more developed before thrusting him into kindergarten and onto a gerbil wheel of perpetual catch up throughout his schooling.

Should He Stay or Should He Go

As a November baby, Gabriel's timing or age or development -- whichever of these terms best serves to define the question of when he ought to start school -- is fraught with more reflection and inner debate than if he were born in the first half of the year. We have, revisited the question many times and each time nodded to ourselves that the best course is to keep him back one more year rather than rush him along. It is not a decision we have come easily to. I may have come to it a little more easily and my unwillingness to sleep on the decision to enrol him in school in September may belie a stubborn streak that I am very reluctant to acknowledge otherwise.

Gabriel is a big kid for his age. That was the story from his arrival and when I compare his size to my own during childhood, he is seven months ahead of me in his height and weight. The first things that come to mind are the expectations that will be thrust upon him because of that size. His peers will look up to him and expect him to do some of their heavy lifting on the playground or in other venues of uneasy childhood detente. Teachers will over look the birthdate in the class register and erode him with expectations of superior development and performance to go along with the size of the child. Those things are obvious, and there is a part of me that acknowledges how old his mother and I are and would like to hold on to him a little longer and at the same time do all we can to ensure that he is as independent as possible when he finishes his public schooling and comes to that cross road.

Earlier this year, Nadine had asked the question of whether he ought to start in September 2016 rather than 2017 and we mulled it over one more time. Four years and 10 months is a bit of a lag behind everyone else and it would be better to have him over-prepared than under. There may be those questions of him being bored if he waited a year longer and there would be the fact that he would be that much bigger than his peers when he finally gets into the queue but I would feel better prepared to talk to him about the advantages and onuses of his size than rebuilding confidence on a regular basis as he tries to catch up.

Earlier this week, the conversation emerged again at his daycare. We had a parent-teacher meeting at the daycare where the teacher in his room indicated that he had a hard time focusing and staying still in class.  I've noticed this in his music class on Saturdays as well. Despite this challenge with attentiveness, however, his daycare teachers feels we ought to consider enrolling him for kindergarten with the rest of the kids currently in his daycare class. Comparisons were made to another boy in the class who have had same problem with attentiveness and another who is slightly younger than Gabriel, but surpasses him for focus and calm. The daycare teacher asserted that she would be able to settle him down within a few months to the point that he would start working on his penmanship a little more, but that remains some distance off. We have witnessed him calm and focused to play with Lego or construction trucks, but my experience of late has been that it has been a slightly more difficult to retain his attention for books at bedtime. He has always been a challenge to settle down for bed; from day one he has seemed to have felt that he would be missing something while he slept.

One question we did not ask during the interview was whether her timeframe was accurate if Gabriel was only in class three days a week. On his days off, he has had the opportunity to go to gymnastics and rock climbing classes. The other thing that is obvious is that he has a lot of energy to burn off. He does have plenty to burn off and I have often joked that our efforts to wear him out are actually just improving his endurance.

I am not sure how much Nadine has given second thoughts to enrolling him early, but one indicator is her comment that the daycare wants to fill his seat with someone else. Further to that it would be a challenge for them to have Gabriel in a group when he is with a group of peers that are that much younger than him. There is the threat that he would be bored during the coming year of daycare, and that it would be a challenge for the teachers there to keep him engaged when they would be, focusing their energies on the majority of the kids. It would be an opportunity for him to take on a role to further develop his social skills and still pursue the valuable task of getting him to focus a little better.

And with that jumble of confessions and contradictions, I have shared the dilemma of when to enrol the lad in school and disclosed enough background for an "expert" to diagnose him with something and reach for the prescription pad. We are not, however, looking for a diagnosis to over-label or to simplify, medicate and discard what is first and foremost "boyhood."  We'll keep modelling calm.  I'll see if my intermittent practice of kanji prompts him to sit and work on writing his alphabet.  I'll keep telling him to keep chugging hard and not to stop and cry when he sees someone he wants to catch up to or pass when he is running.  We will keep him on his path and at his pace.

The Comfort of Ritual

I wake up with my legs telling me, like Obi-Wan with some Jedi Mind Shit, "You don't need to do hills this morning." I did hills 36 hours earlier and the legs don't have much life in them. So, it being Saturday, I settle down at the laptop to write and edit.

Gabriel shuffles into the office at 6:55 to express his bewilderment that the 7 on his digital clock -- we block off the minutes -- still hasn't appeared. I've been grumpy with the weary legs and now the train of thought that has encountered this barricade for the day. When we are all up and I'm assured no one will be disturbed, I storm through the chores: dishes, laundry washed and into the dryer, an older load folded and an even older one into dressers, night-time diapers disposed of, recycling done with a bracing moment contemplating the cool, grey dawn as boxes are punched flat.

As soon as he was up, Gabe said he was hungry and after serving him his two requests, he still hasn't eaten more than a bite or two, he's still in his pyjamas and the clock is ticking down toward departure time for music class.  I've issued the threat that if he doesn't get going there'll be no music, no pizza and no time with the camera. I know that keeping the promise would mean idling around home fending off his requests for TV until I land on that sweet spot that gets him doing something else though not rewarding him.

He buys in, however, and he's dressed, self-fed and bouncing impatiently in the hallway while I get my shoes on.  He has even done his homework for music with his closest approximation to colouring inside the lines -- the first victory of the day.

The morning has turned and I can look ahead to all those things that we anticipated. He runs up the hill and I try to teach him micro lessons about pacing and getting up the hill without having to stop. My legs are dead, but moving a little and keeping pace with him. 

The transfer between the train and the bus leaves a window of time that I've gotten into the habit of filling with a stop at Starbucks. Tea and a cookie for me; juice and a rice krispie square for him make for a quiet moment. Usually there is just one other occupied table in the cafe and there is a calm in neutral territory.  He contemplatively works through his square and the juice seems not to overstimulate him despite its sugar.  He is unprompted with his thanks, his expression of love for running and his comment that this grey, Russian-novel, morning is a beautiful one. It truly is. I marvel at his resilience and his knack for wiping away the significance of my scowling efficiency in addressing what apparently needs doing. 

This is needed and it resets my entire weekend. He marvels at the tall apartment across the street, counting the floors as I snap a surreptitious shot of him pointing up and counting to sixteen. The conversation leads to the word "opposite." I evade the definition and ask him what the opposite of short is and he's off.  Big, up, on, in, tall, young and new, down, left and here. He gets them all without struggling with the curveballs and I can praise him each time. We share our treats, and when it is time to go he wants to help carry my hot cup of tea to the counter for the take out lid and I wonder if these twenty minutes a week will add up for him the way they do for me.

Ink Smudge Eureka

    "Letters and bridge, or crosswalk?"

    Gabriel chants "Eenie Meenie" to make the decision, repeating "Miney" twice at the end to land "Mo" on the "Letters" route home from daycare.  It is called the Letters route because the "Saint Barnabas Anglican Church" printed into the concrete provides Gabriel with all of the letters in his name except for that "E" which is a few metres away to indicate the corner of Seventh Avenue NW.

(When it rains, it pours?)

    For the longest time we would stop and pick out the letters in his name, make an exaggerated point to the E's on the corner and then spot the "L" before resuming the walk home.  When it was snow-covered, he kicked away the deep, heavy snow to find the writing, but lately he has had less and less interest in identifying the letters in his name.  This afternoon he is more interested in splashing and kicking in the puddles and the writing lay immobile with out notice or significance.

   Nadine and I have been reading to him constantly.  I infamously whispered passages from Haruki Murakami's brick-sized tome 1Q84 during those newborn days and he arrived to a room more than well-stocked with Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and myriad others that we have read to him ever since.  His visits to the library are constant and I recall him having a massive meltdown one afternoon as he sat naked on his bedroom floor at 4:55 crying that he wanted to go to the library, which was closing at 5.  Books are part of his routine and, even though he can glaze over indefinitely at the sight of an iPad and treats us to a litany of requests for just one more episode of a TV program before supper, bedtime or getting in the car to go somewhere, he does from time to time plunk down quietly with a book and immerse himself in the images, the turn of the pages and the cadences recalled from countless readings.

   He has regularly finished sentences for us as we read and recently, I have made a point of pushing him a little, framing a word with my fingers and telling him what it is or asking if he can recognize it. He has put up a bit of resistance to that and tells me to read it or that he does not want to.  Perhaps it is simply a matter of it all feeling too much like work for him, but I push a little bit.

    Parallel to the reading has been the occasional nudge to see if he will write anything and start working on his letters.  Whenever there are birthday cards to send we get him a card too and he will pick up the pen in his right hand, gripping it between his index and middle fingers and his thumb and giving it a go.  The results have been consistently original and doctorish.  Think abstract rather than representational.

   For some time now I have pondered modelling writing as a habit for him, but have not gotten around to it yet.  For the most part I write at the keyboard and when I do pick up pen and paper it is usually when I am on my own, rather than for the sake of making a witnessed performance of it.  As the adult colouring craze has emerged, I recall the meditative component of practicing kanji when I lived in Japan and thought that it would be a good two-birds with one stone move and make it rather authentic for Gabriel at the same time.  I have the paper and the notebooks that I used to practice in and it would make my effort at penmanship a bit more authentic.  If I start practicing my Roman characters it could cause a bit of concern about the integrity of my faculties.

   Before I have actually had the chance to sit down and work on my kanji and see if Gabriel asks, "What are you doing?", instead of, for example, "Know what?", the time comes for us to get cards in the mail for my father's birthday.

   I head into Gabriel's room with his card for his grandpa and ask his to write something in the card. On this occasion, for the first time, he makes a deliberate effort at copying each letter from the text of the card.  He got his "G" backwards, but that may have been a consequence of me telling him, "It is sort of a circle with a line..."

(Yes, he has had alphabet books.)

After getting past the "G," he fared better and provided not only a reasonable estimation of his name but a sign that the little guy who has been putting up concerning resistance to reading and writing might let Nadine and I sort him out on his printing before he can conclude that he can entirely forego it because of keyboards and touchscreens.

Trapped In the Antechamber of Sleep

I will get where I'm going eventually, but I'm going to start with an ongoing discussion my wife and I have had off and on about whether or not to get Netflix. Ideally we would cut cable and go for Netflix as an alternative.  I'm watching less and less television of late, not even watching basketball on a regular basis.  Nadine watches The National regularly and indulges in the disaster movie genre late on a Saturday night, late of course being 8:30.

For my own part, I've occasionally gone all in on a 99 cent rental from iTunes, but I don't usually get around to watching them until the very last day of the 30 rental period.  Tonight I tried to beat the clock on a rental that is an interesting echo to this period of parenthood.  While We're Young had an echoey premise with a pair of childless 40-somethings finding themselves struggling with middle age and also losing touch with friends who have kids.  Not that I'm in the main characters' situation but it has been interesting to see a subtle, not too broad comedy.  Today being the 30th day on the rental, I managed to squeeze in the first 52 minutes this morning thanks to a gust of insomnia that got me out of bed at 5:10 this morning.

Tonight I have the balance of the movie, another 53 minutes to get in before the things expires at 9:34pm tonight.  I'm also flying solo tonight as Nadine has had her first girls' weekend of motherhood start today.

Gabriel missed Nadine tonight and getting him down tonight required a bit more attention and work. I got him into bed a 8pm sharp after dinner, vitamins, teeth and his books but he was a little restless and longing for Nadine's comfort on this night.  When we first settled in, he was rather chatty and energetic a sign that he might be a while settling in and falling asleep.  We exchanged notes on bumps and scratches that we have accumulated over the last few days and assured one another that we would recover.  I resorted to what I could to settle him down, stroking his stomach and his head to help him, but as he settled down time and again there was always a stumble on his way from consciousness to sleep.  

As the first silence settled, he interrupted himself to tell me that dressing up as Super Mario and going on stage to "dance" to "Uptown Funk" was the highlight of our holiday last month.  I did not get enough shots of that.  I settled him down again or so I thought and I laid quietly next to him waiting for that rhythm and rasp of breathing that suggested that he was nodding off...out.  As I weighed the growing silence in the dark he would perk up to ask where his, "medium-size bear, Barry" (or Beary, he'll correct me on the spelling when he spells) is and a few minutes later asked about his rabbit, which is nameless.

The breathing settled into that familiar rhythm as the hour ticked along and I felt confident enough to nudge myself to a seated position on the side of his bed, only to have him ask where I was and what I was doing. I settled back in next to him again and waited for the breathing to indicate whether he was progressing toward sleep.  I had to do this a few times.

There was one time he asked me if I heard what he heard in the still of the apartment and another where he pointed out that the only thing he could hear was me shushing him to get quiet and settle down.

On another occasion, "You farted. That was funny," left me wondering if he was back at square one.

Throughout, I kept my eye on the clock and wondered if his unsteady progression toward sleep might keep me from finishing the movie before it expired.  There were other interruptions as he asked what we were doing on the weekend, asked when his mother was coming back and rambled randomly in utterances that suggested he was finally giving up consciousness for the day.  He fell asleep around 9pm and allowed me a chance to see the rest of the movie.  The juggling act, as one of the later scenes in the movie admitted, especially for parents of young kids in their 40s is, both physically and mentally, a demanding one. I'm glad the Mrs. is getting a break from it at last.  In the meantime, hold on to your sense of humour and your ability to let things go.

Satisfied but not Taking Credit

The Lad riding the last stretch to the 

finish of his first 5K.

For about six years, I have been a rather serious runner and the highlight of many of my races has been high-fiving Gabriel, giving him a kiss as I pass by or grabbing his hand at the finish to run the last 50 metres and let him get my medal.

I am not getting too carried away with early plans for his running career and heading into "runner dad" mode - if there is such a thing.  He is still too young to put that kind of wear and tear on his body and I'd insist on him minimizing his running until he is in junior high at least. However, he enjoys sprinting down the corridor of our apartment building when we are coming home from daycare and he is familiar with my running rituals and idiosyncrasies. I've actually made more effort to interest him in photography than running, but he might be taking the sport into his own hands. After each of my races lately, he has taken my race number to keep in his room and he keeps a few of my medals on the closet door in his bedroom.

On December 31, I ran in a 10K race to finish the year and told my wife about the opportunity to walk 5K at the same time. Once we confirmed Gabriel could join her without having to pay an additional registration fee, she signed up with the plan to bring him along for a walk.  My plan was to finish my 10K and then backtrack on the route to meet them as the completed their walk. Much to my surprise, however, they had covered more than half their distance when I crossed paths with them. Gabriel had amped up the urge to run the first half of the 5K, dragging Nadine along until he conked. (Nadine suggested that I (of all people) needed to work with him on his pacing. I'm not the best example of that.)  Throughout his run, he earned praise from the walkers that he blitzed past in the flash-upon-foot-strike sneakers he raced in. He ate up the camaraderie of the race. By the time I caught back up to them, he was beat and tired. He rode my shoulders the last 500 metres to the finish.

Since that race, Gabriel has taken his running to another level.  After a few months of him insisting that I taken his hand and run him as fast as I can for a little sprint, he has run off ahead of me on our regular walks to the LRT or other regular destinations.  The biggest thing for me is that it is so much faster than was the case when he was prone to get distracted by a stick on the ground, a rabbit or an excavator.

It will be interesting to see if this is nothing more than a passing phase that ends as soon as I hit "post" on this addition to the blog or if he remains interested. The biggest thing right now is how well he sleeps when he covers a lot of distance in a given day, but given how conscious everyone is about children's fitness, it is good that he enjoys it as much as he does. As we ran home from day care today, Gabriel boasted about how much energy he was getting from his run - confirming my facetious concern that the regular exercise was more likely to enhance his endurance than wear him out. However, given how few boys and men run compared to women, it could be an opportunity to not only maintain his fitness but get some satisfaction in the achievements he might accrue. In the last half-marathon I completed, there weren't any teenage male competitors.  If he has inherited my (knock on wood) resilience and the other physical assets that have allowed me to continue improving at my age, he can find the release and satisfaction in that outlet.

I just have to keep him off asphalt for the next 10-15 years - the ultimate "do as I say and not as I do."

Five Stages of Grief in 68 Minutes

This afternoon, the optometrist, or opthamalogist, I'm not inclined to quibble, turned her back on my wife and I to have a one on one with the dude: "Gabriel, I have to tell you that your eye is broken."

A moment before, she had let us know that something was up while Gabriel occupied himself with eleventy bajillion dollar equipment she uses for eye exams. She showed us the scans of his eyes and the accompanying data on each eye. One measured something with a 1.50 and the other a 6.75 - a stark discrepancy. "Broken," though, for its simplicity to the ears and experience of a four-year-old sent palpable chills through mum and dad. I gave into to the urge to caution him to stop playing with the precision equipment, only to have the opto-expert chide me with, "Chill out, Dad," soon to be reused by my preschooler with some regularity, I'm sure. We booked another appointment to confirm the issue while I tried to recall the occasion where his reluctance to use his left eye presaged his efforts to get his right eye out from the shield she used for today's single-eye tests of his vision.

Mom's face reddened and eyes moistened. I was stoic and tried to joke about it. There is expectation that it'll correct itself with the proposed intervention of eyeglasses and further hope that he will take to wearing his glasses as I do. 

The walk home was somber and I pondered the restaurants we passed as a respite to stop and change the atmosphere. I passed, conscious that my appetite for sushi - the first option to present itself - surpassed that of my fish-phobic wife. I was not in the mood for the daily ritual of pulling Gabriel by the hand and running as hard as I could to drag him and his scrambling legs in my wake. It was only after some insistence that I relented and tugged him along. Even Mum trotted along. 

It is not the first time we have had a medical issue that sent us reeling to worst case scenario. Before he turned 3 months old, we learned that there were concerns about how his hips were aligning and he spent several months in a hips brace that kept his legs splayed until there was confidence that they were settling into their sockets the way they should. We know it could be worse and we ponder that aloud in first world problem terms as we acknowledge that we caught it and can intervene, and that elsewhere in the world, children do not have opto-experts near at hand and insisting on annual visits.

Gabriel is oblivious to his issue as far as we can tell. I moved his Toys R Us Lego catalogue to his left side so that he might use his weaker eye a little more. I also recall Gabriel's first evasion of his left eye. When I first introduced him to the SLR camera last month he peered through the viewfinder with his right eye and repelled my efforts to get to his left eye, the more balanced posture with a camera. It was of little comfort to recall that. 

The rest of the night unfolded as it usually does and I mustered the goofiness to try to read the first few pages of book to Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" until the cadence mercifully veered away from that melody. Gabriel demanded that I keep singing the book that way there was nothing resembling the chorus. (Whew.) If I write a children's book maybe I'll set it to the melody of "Everlong."

We have, for the moment gone from grief to acceptance and we'll return to the opto-expert next Wednesday to flirt with denial and bargaining for a few moments before our charming little daredevil becomes bespectacled.

Memories As The Lad Turns 4

There are moments of my son's life thus far that well up from out of nowhere to grace me with memories that I never imagined I would have.  In and of themselves, they are too brief to fill post of their own, but perhaps together they add up to more than passing anecdote. At this point, as he turns four, they are among the things that I will tell him about himself to give him some sense of his character, his talents and narrative. The question is how much the stories will amount to as time goes on and he forms memories through experiences I will not witness or document.

The first fond moment is from when he was barely 10 weeks old and the milestones were supposedly a bit further down the road... steps, words, sentences, commando crawl... but on the evening of January 21, 2012 - a number numerologists would probably drool over - his first gurgle of the laughter. I have heard it since in so many forms, including forced, vaguely maniacal and downright heart-melting.  On that night, it was a simple, pure peal of joy that moistened the eyes.  And so I started compiling the highlights of his life to report back to him to bridge these early years when his memories slip away rather than form and I wait to pass them on at a time when he is more autonomous and he compiles memories and evolves with less and less of my storage and memory.

There are some things that could remain evident without much intervention and I hang onto them as points of pride. Whether I tell him or not may have little bearing, especially if it is an innate thing that he is hard-wired for.

For instance, his first indication of a precocious connection with music is a eureka I pass on as sign of talent that has been handed down or skipped a generation.  After a few attempts of subversively slipping some jazz into his musical diet thanks to a video that featured a train, he called out "train" upon hearing a completely different acoustic arrangement of the same song while we were in the car.  That may be one of those unique things that I will not have to tell him about but can trust.

There are other moments that I simply hang on to as a joy of fatherhood. This summer, while I was coming home from work, I checked my phone to fire up the audiobook I was listening to. Before I got to it, I noticed that there was a text with an image from my wife and was puzzled by the solid black form that appeared with the image she sent. I opened it and was treated to a drowsy rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" without any performance anxiety and his voice catching earnestly throughout as a profound reminder of the innocence and the delicateness that define even this robust boy at age 3.  I immediately replayed it again and again on my way home.  When the time comes I'll play it back for him and his embarrassment at the poignancy may mellow with the passing of time and the realization of how early he was generous in this way.

There are those embarrassing moments that we will remind him of, such as his first encounter with wasabi, which we warned him about to no avail.  He threw a sizeable dollop into his mouth and suffered no end of pain.

However many memories I accumulate of him, there will still be gaps as he leads his own life and he accumulates stories to share with friends as he grows older, forms his personality and creates his narrative going forward. There has been an independent streak from a very early age. When I first dropped him off at daycare three years ago, I hung around for about 15 minutes to ensure that he knew that I was leaving him behind and sure that he was aware enough to not panic and wail when he finally realized I was gone. The last thing I wanted to do was make him reliant on strangers during such a moment of anxiety, no matter how professional and experienced they are in addressing those moments in life (and they are.) Instead, he sat indifferent to my farewell waves and I only gave up and got on with my day when he toddled over to a new schoolmate and started playing with her. They still play (and play well) together most of the time at daycare and she is among the guests attending his fourth birthday party in a few days time.  As soon as he started playing, I got the feeling that it was safe for me to go.

From that moment, I have never had much trouble acknowledging, though not necessarily accepting, that I am not going to be there for every moment of his life as he grows up. I still beam at the second-hand account of one occasion at daycare when he relieved one of the staff from the challenge of consoling one of his classmates.  A girl was sobbing into the arms of one of the staff at the daycare when Gabriel approached and extended his arms for a hug. The daycare worker regarded it as an "I need one too" gesture at a moment when her attention simply wasn't available to him. He was brushed off for a few moments, but stood his ground until the staff interpreted the gesture as "Let me help," instead of "my turn." The daycare worker let go of the crying child and Gabriel gave the girl a hug and calmed this classmate.  After the hug, she gambolled off, her troubles eased and forgotten. He then extended his arms to give the day care worker a hug. He wasn't even two years old. That account of his compassion is another reminder of the innocence and sensitivity that children possess.

There are other secondhand accounts and other bits of data that will find their way to me as time goes on and less and less that I will compile on my own for him. Accounts will differ and conflict or I will give a more detached version of events than he will at times. I have no idea when the secondhand stories about him will come to me or what they will amount to, but they will each be a part of a life that he will control in a way that will enchant me, make me weep, beam, burst out laughing, or recall with embarrassment how much he is like his father. But I will never quite control it. The best I can do is bear witness to as much of it as possible and occasionally fill in the gaps for him when the story or the self at stake are unfamiliar to him.

The Band-Aid Treatment

The humble band-aid has always been subject to no small amount of disregard and humour.  I cite Richard Sanders' continual use of bandages throughout his performance as Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati and our denigrating use of the phrase I use as the title of this post as two instances of the disregard with which we regard the bandage's place as childhood placebo. However, as one who has limped through the past week with some foot issues and longing for an ample, substantial fabric Elastoplast bandage to keep the blistering and more from getting any worse.

Throughout my brief struggles with the severe blistering and worse my foot has gone through, I've had to chug along with two thin bandages from a Winnie the Pooh set adorned with a tiny imprint of Piglet on them to keep my toe issues from worsening.  My point (at this point) is that band-aids seem to be part and parcel of childhood more than anything else and I'm sure that any parent who really needs a bandage for a real cut is probably wandering around with a kid's version.

Gabriel has a couple of owies on his fingers at the moment - miniscule, of course - and is in urgent need of a regular covering to ensure the proper healing.  They are still part of a healing regimen with Mom's kisses and occasionally Dad's if mother is unavailable, but the mercurochrome smiles of my youth, that added smiling talisman of love and healing, has all but disappeared from childhood recuperation.

This morning, however, as Gabriel determined that his two-day old Hulk band-aid needed replacing with, if it were at all possible, a Spiderman bandage.  The request left us sorting through the supply that we have.  All of the various character sets we have - save the Winnie the Pooh set that has been residing in my bathroom since long before I needed them for some reason - are mixed together so we spent a few minutes trying to see through the wrappers to determine which was the required Spiderman plaster to hurry along recovery or provide the appropriate talisman for the remainder of his healing.  The Muppet band-aids with Kermit's eyes and Beaker's "meep meeps" exasperation were in ample supply.  (I would like to digress to add that Beaker's ailments regular surpass anything that a mere Band-Aid were to address and that there is an irony in a Beaker band aid that I will try not to dwell on too long or trouble myself to unlock.) As we went through the band aids and tried to distinguish the Planes and Cars bandages from the Marvel comics and other Muppet versions I wondered if Gabriel would ever subject us to a precise choice of character were he in a more urgent situation.

Ultimately, we abandoned our search for Spiderman settled on a Captain America bandage. As we affixed it, we struggled to explain who he exactly was without denigrating him too much, a challenge for me as I spent more time reading hockey books than comics.  I anticipate the occasion when he is ready for comic book movies and I remind him that hero X was actually someone that he had a band aid of and see his face contort as the ultra-trivial contribution to his association with a movie he is about to watch. As with any of these encounters with pop culture, I am surprised at how Gabriel gets exposed to it and seems to know it so well. His grasp of the Star Wars series, strictly through the ether and passing conversation with school mates astounds me at times. Tonight, he sleeps with his band aid clashing with his Spiderman pajamas without the least amount of concern.

This time.

Growth Spurts and Tough Talks to Ponder and Forego

One of the highlights of each fall has been "school" pictures of Gabriel that have been taken at his daycare.  The proofs from this year's efforts sit in front of me and in the place of the unconscious playfulness from the sets when Gabriel was on the cusp of 2 and then 3 years of age there are two options to choose from which are a stark contrast from those previous sets.

Apart from the fact that there are merely two carefully posed shots instead of a set of nine which were enchanting with their spontaneity, there is the suggestion that Gabriel has stretched out and that there is a leanness which indicates baby-fat has been shed and there is that boyishness seemed to be looming, but now is clearly evident.  In previous years the shots included moments of closed-eyed laughter and an impish smirk that suggested a bit of interaction with a photographer who knew how to capture the age group before them in all their innocent beauty.

Self-portrait, feet. Gabriel Hanlon, October, 2015.

As Gabriel approaches 4, the suggestion in the pictures is that he is more ready to engage with people and take direction - albeit from a photographer.  The poses show more evidence of a cue or request being acknowledged than a playfulness that was deferred to when he was younger.  The shots seem a little stiffer and no where near the poignancy of the shots from last year and the year before.  These shots, commemorating 2015 and his fourth autumn mark a different phase.  Much of what has happened seems to indicate that as well.

Two days ago when I spoke to him on the phone there was an attentiveness to the conversation or a clarity to his train of thought that made me think that time jumped ahead a year rather than a few hours since I had dropped him off at daycare.  Apart from that, he flipped the bird for the first time during Thanksgiving dinner, an indication that his surroundings are not as insulated and certain as they used to be. As he approaches school age, there will be more and more occasions where his peers initiate him to those less innocent skill sets and the hard conversations begin.

There are other hard conversations to weigh as well and with those the reminder that he is still a few years away from memories that will stick with him. One of my rituals with Gabriel from as far back as "the bucket stage" has been to take him to pizza with friends on Saturdays.  He has graduated from the bucket to his own place at the table and a pizza of his own.  Earlier this week one of those friends from that Saturday ritual, Mike, a stoic retired train engineer who particularly bonded with Gabriel, passed away after a few years of health struggles and informing us each Saturday that he was tired.

As I ponder breaking this news to Gabriel, I am inclined not to bother.  During Mike's final illness over the last few months, Gabriel never expressed concern about his absence and I wondered if it was a case of him not recalling Mike in his absence.  As I lean toward not sharing the news with him, I suspect that he has already forgotten Mike, though I hope there may be some trace recall of the particular fondness that they had for one another and an occasion where Gabriel asks after him and allows the opportunity to recall a friendship and discuss a simple reality of the passing of time.

The Generational Thing

There have been a few times over the past few weeks where friends have talked about differences between our generation and our parents' and have rationalized the differences between us as a consequence of generational differences. The differences, though significant, are hard to accurately delineate to one type of parenting versus another.  The technological changes, the evolution of gender roles and the sizes of families are just a handful of the differences that distinguish current parents from their own parents.

Many of my friends and I describe our anticipation of sharing things with our kids. The number of times that it is an aspect of pop culture is significant: whether the Muppets, Star Wars and its multiple trilogies, the music we grew up on (that has never seemed to go away) or countless other things we are looking forward to laying ourselves on the line for with our kids, despite our knowledge that there will be a day when our kids deem themselves too cool for anything that their parents want to talk about.  There may be, in my own case, the off chance that Gabriel will clamour for tickets to the Foo Fighters with good ol' mum and dad, but he still might outgrow that.

For the time being, there is the excitement to share with him the latest books by the kids authors we have championed during our brief stint as parents, the occasional exposure to the Muppets and Bugs Bunny that has not altered his obsession with the Cars movies.  Still I rejoice in his recall of the occasional jazz piece that he recognizes, likes even and - most tellingly - identifies when there are different arrangements.  I stake so much in passing these things on to him and it leaves me wondering if my folks invested themselves in passing such things on and, more importantly, if I am passing anything else on to him.

From my parents there are things that have come my way in the pop cultural vein but it may have been more incidental than of the, "you have to listen to this" vein of John Cusack's Rob Gordon character in High Fidelity. (I'm hoping to get Gabriel to read the book first and then I'll risk a double feature of that and Say Anything... on a Saturday family film night during those very years when he will be tuning us out and dealing with a period when most relationships simply confound an adolescent.  If I'm lucky, he'll patiently indulge dear old Dad and ask what that big thing was that Diane had all those x's in.) From my parents I can trace my fondness for Burt Bacharach, Stan Rogers, Bill Cosby (still a comic genius, but I'll introduce Gabriel to Bob Newhart recordings instead) and Abba.  My father was quite discerning, more than he would ever let on, with his movie choices and having Gallipoli among the first tapes to visit out VCR has imparted a permanent reverence for its director, Peter Weir. I'm not sure if any of it was intentional, however.

The most telling image that comes to mind as I reflect on all of this, though was that rainy day in 1977 when my brothers and I saw Star Wars. To that point we had our occasional trips to the theatre for Disney fare and after a full summer of the hype that built as Star Wars became the biggest grossing movie of all time - beating Gone With The Wind which my parents, thankfully, never thrust upon us unsuspectingly. We had gone with the Manuels, who we'd all but grown up with and I was enthralled by finally piecing together this movie that had merely been in the ether for me to that point.  Dad stayed home and when we returned from the movie with our new wallets of pop culture cache loaded with one of the bigger deposits that we would pocket in the decades ahead, he glanced out of the basement of our split entry home with a small but noticeable gash in his forehead.

He spent that time in the workshop, starting to give shape to the unfinished basement that would eventually accommodate the TV room, the second bathroom and fourth bedroom that would ensure we three boys would have the space we would need as we headed on our journeys through adolescent and into bigger bodies and more sharply defined personas. Renovations and carpentry were a significant recollection from childhood.  My parents renovated the first house we lived in during the five and a half years we were there, finished the basement in the second and my father built the house where he and mum have lived since 1983. Throughout those years, especially when he was working on the furniture and cabinetry that he poured himself and his discipline into I came away with the metaphor of that discipline in the careful measurements of course but also the dedication to the sanding and finishing of the fine work that rendered the unvarnished wood one of the most intimate and proud moments of contact my hands will ever know.

When I look at where I am now and ponder the extent to which I avoid the tasks which my father is so expert at, I think of Neil Postman's book The Disappearance of Childhood which operates on the notion that childhood is disappearing not only because of the rush to make them adults but more tellingly the efforts adults make to arrest their development to a stage of childhood or adolescence which they do not wish to depart. When I think of my desire to cram the three seasons of The Muppet Show that I have on DVD (BTW can somebody get off their can and release the last two seasons!!!) ...uhm, where was I... right... I wonder how grown up an example I am setting for Gabriel when I strive to connect on the pop culture level.  (I am not 100% certain if it is my level or his.)

When I take my anticipation of sharing of pop culture and compare it with the example that my father set and the small amount of time that had for the things he enjoyed, unless the time he devoted to leaving his mark on the space we lived in was infused with his passion - the evidence would suggest that - there is a sense that the generational difference is not something that I can boast as an indication of progress from my father's generation to mind.  I think of the time that Gabriel spends with my father-in-law and the way that there is something more constructive or productive in the way that they ultimately work together.  I see that and beam with pride when Gabriel picks up the garbage in his path on a train platform and takes the mission of depositing that garbage where it belongs.

I take some hope in the small lessons of patience that I may teach Gabriel when we are out with the cameras and acknowledge that there is probably an openness among my generation of males that my father's may not have felt free to tap into, but in their way and with their sacrifices and discipline there is still much to honour.  I hope I can do more than merely aspire to pass that on.

The Lad and the Camera

Things did not exactly go as planned. Plan A was to take him to a landmark that he would remember (or be reminded) was the first place or thing he photographed. He was not in the mood to walk to the modern red bridge that he was so excited to see whenever we take the train downtown. Plan B quickly deteriorated when he got more focused on eating all of the snacks I had packed for the day. There was not going to be a perfect moment to introduce him to the experience of capturing the world as he sees it. At the point Plan B filled my thoughts with the challenge of getting lunch into him after he ate all his snacks, I retreated to a more perfunctory introduction to the camera.

After getting him set on how to properly hold a point and shoot with a few simple mantras about holding it with both hands, keeping still and keeping the wrist strap on, he set out. After being the subject of enough baby shots to develop a dislike for the camera, he had one to call his own and he was off.

Once he got the hang of it, he was eager to get moving and find what else he could photograph. We wandered around the city parks, shooting construction sites, of course, but also fallen leaves en masse and in solitude as autumn sets in on us. Once he got into it, I was able to tell him little things like "get closer" and "look carefully," foundations of whatever progress he will make over time with the camera.

At the moment, he is amusingly unfiltered with the camera. He started taking pictures of passers-by, while I, who loathes invading anyone's space pleaded, "Ask first! You have ask first!" He even snapped a shot of his urinal when I finally broke him of his quest for "one more shot" and got him into a washroom. All in all it was a good start to something I had not hoped to get him into until he was big enough to lug the DSLR I've had waiting for him. For now, he is happy to know the shutter button and the on/off switch and to look back on what he took.

For now, it is a pleasure to ease him into one of my passions and hopefully get him familiar with the patience, presence and attentiveness that the camera has rewarded me with over the years. Hopefully those microlessons about observation and patience will inform other things but in the meantime there is the joy and wonder of an uncensored view of the world from a height of 40 inches. Onward.

Joy in Insomnia

Before anyone thinks I'm being sarcastic, that is the furthest thing from my thoughts. My son is in a stretch where a full night's sleep is something of a rarity and my wife and I, no matter how deeply we manage to sleep still encounter an interruption through the night if our son has a fitful night because of a bad dream and cannot find the comfort of his favorite stuffed puppy.

When he manages to find it, we often awake to him crawling into bed with us, his trek down the hall signalled by the approaching light of the stuffy's nightlight tummy.  If he manages to get that far without waking us we will wake to find him wedged between us and ask one another when he got there.

On just as many nights though we take him back to bed and lay with him until he falls asleep again or until we wake up.  While our son favours having his mother put him down in the evening, he tends to prefer me during the bewitched hours when the dreams and what they stir in the imagination make him a bit more restive or uncertain about the coming of dawn and the more familiar patterns of the day.

Invariably I do my best to settle him down with consoling strokes of his forehead or a gentle hand on the belly and all the unsettling that is going on there when the dreams have awoken him.  For me it is a calm and patient hour of the night when I can be the calm shadow to the grumpier, stricter father of daylight.  I feel myself connecting to him in the quiet of the darkness or the dim nightlight of musical puppy with its renditions of ABC, Twinkle, Twinkle, Brahms' Lullabye or the primal simplicity of a beating heart.  He settles down or asks deep questions that I answer as well as I can.  He yawns with a gape that takes me back when he was a more literal handful of a few months' of age, his profile the perfect enlargement of the form I recall from when he was three or four months old.

I stroke his head again and again as he sentences grow incoherent and I think of my father stroking my head a lifetime ago or him stroking my grandmother's as we bid her farewell two decades ago. And as the breathing slips into its sleepy rhythm that will break in a few hours time with another thrash about the uncertainties that unsteady sleep for him through the night, I stay with him while I can, while he's small enough to spare me that space and vulnerable enough to need someone nearby until morning comes.

The Pitfalls of Social Media, I

My wife and I have been conscious about Gabriel's use of computers and further to that have avoided posting images of him on Facebook, etc.  We rarely do it and on those rare occasions that it happens his face is hidden from view.  We are in no rush to set up any accounts for him, though we did muse about setting up an email account for him to receive various digital artifacts from us until the time comes for him to open it up and learn a little about himself. We do not wish to get him habituated to Facebook any sooner than necessary. I'd love it if that day came and he simply said that Facebook was so passé or something to that effect.

Still, he likely has more screen time than we would like and there are times when we do use it to pacify him. (Guilty as charged, but Your Honour we only do it when we really, really need him to chill.) He values that screen time but there have been a few times when we've grounded him with a few days without TV and he manages not to miss it and we even got into the fifth day without him asking for it.

There are times though when he is more eager than we would like to watch Mighty Machines or Bob the Builder on the phone when boredom sets in. A few weeks ago, he flailed away at my wife's phone while she was scanning her Facebook time line. He happened to see something along the lines of a children's video and wanted to see it. My wife settled him down, but little did she know of the consequences. Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

A day or so later when my wife was putting down Gabriel for the night, my mother-in-law called my wife's phone to check in. I answered. She wanted to see how things were for us and update on things that were going on with the rest of the family. Having covered off all of those items, she tried to investigate into an article that Nadine had apparently liked on Facebook. She was not entirely certain that Nadine would have liked an article on a parenting page where a wife was complaining about her husband losing interest in ahem... you can guess. I tried to check my wife's timeline for interest in such an article while trying to ease my mother-in-law's curiosity or concern as tactfully as I could. As I opened the computer to check my wife's Facebook activity, I was able to report that, as far as I could tell, she had not posted anything for about two weeks.  I could not, however, track down what my wife was liking. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was asking if I knew any of the other people who had liked the article. The unspoken question about my husbandly ... ahem ... hung like a cloud that showed no signs of dissipating with a calm shrug and the conclusion that someone hacked in. The call ended without curiosity or retention of reputation... Hold it, what? reputation?... assured or resolved or otherwise safely consigned to "don't ask and don't tell" (wrong phrase?) or perhaps put back in that place where all parties involved are blissfully ignorant of the topic and no longer able to recall that it was ever raised or why. It was as awkward as the voice mail sequence from the bro movie classic, Swingers.

The phone call ended without much resolution and when my wife emerged from putting the lad down for the night, I mentioned the more uncomfortable aspect of the phone call and she promptly checked on her timeline.  There was indeed a like on said article from a parenting website or Facebook page. It was the result of the lad's flailing reach to start the video he wanted.

It was then - carefully - unliked.

Street-proofing the Extroverted Child

It was evident from very early that my son was going to be an extrovert. I can cite several occasions where he has "worked the room" like a campaigning politician out on the hustings while my wife I and fell consigned to the background. We look on in wonder while we try to assess everyone else's tolerance for this three-year-old who can be remarkably charming when he wants to get to know people. My wife can cite occasions where trips to the zoo involve meeting a fellow tyke, bonding at the penguin plunge and then visiting the rest of the animals and having a bit of lunch over the course of the rest of the day.

It has been the case throughout his life, whether visiting his grandfather in the hospital or starting day care on the cusp of turning one and leaving Dad behind without the least trepidation about being in this room full of unknown kids. In our condominium, he has been introducing himself to everyone since her could say his name.

Earlier this summer, however, he wandered off from his day care group while out on an excursion. It did not surprise us, but we were just as horrified at the possibilities. 

From early on we have been conscious of the need to make him not so trusting and open with people and not expose himself to the risks with strangers, but at the same time we have not wanted to erode his innocence and unduly inhibit him from interacting as freely as he does. He is incredibly open and friendly in most situations with people of all ages and we do not wish to deny him that aspect of his personality. There are risks in him walking up to that stranger that we would most likely prefer to keep him away from, but at the same time he may also be building a pool of people who would recognize him and look twice if they saw him with an adult other than my wife or I.

I believed that he has the confidence with people that would make him a harder target. He is likelier to be at the centre of a group of friends rather than the periphery and in need of being at the centre. In our condominium he has incidentally built a network of vigilant eyes who know him well enough to get suspicious if he is not with us. That was the case with him wandering off from his daycare group, but that is a consequence of the safeguards that are part of the routines and procedures at the daycare. In our condominium, where he knows half the puppies in the building and most of the adults who are on our floor there is a sense that there are people who know him and recognize him and us well enough to know when something is awry if he is in the wrong company. But that network has not been tested and we do not wish test it.

We can not be certain that he will always be that confident with his friends and that he will not make himself vulnerable by seeking the attention or friendship of strangers who may be waiting for such an opportunity to pose a threat to him. There have been times when his attempts to strike up a friendship or a brief period of companionship at the playground do not succeed and he is at a loss for what to do on his own while other kids play together or simply go home with their parents.

We have tried nudging the matter of caution with strangers onto his radar with various children's books that attempt to address the issue and the best of the bunch is still "Little Red Riding Hood." (There is a version populated by trucks instead of wolves and girls but that is too cringeworthy.) Other books on the theme strike me as too didactic to hit the mark in the memorable but carefree way I think is required. My wife and I seize our teachable moments as well with the emphasis on generalization rather than "stay away from her," but there is no certainty that the objective of this lesson is ever achieved. I heard from a mother a few weeks ago that there was a test with children on how they would behave with a potential lurer or children predator. The test showed that despite the training and safe words that parents drill their kids on, they are still prone to being tempted into danger. (Damn puppies!)

There is the hope that there will be something about my son's extroversion - whether his confidence with strangers or his ability to make friends - that would make lurers more reluctant to fix on him, but I know that is mere wishful thinking. A parent's hope is not enough and we can only hope that the daily routine imparts some caution to him over time and keeps it rooted there without making him more frightened that he ought to be. Open, but cautious.

Renaissance and Revelation on the Trail

As the summer of 2015 winds to its end, something harshly portended by a 24-hour cold snap that included freezing temperatures and snow, we took Gabriel for a hike in the mountains.  He had gone on a hike or two around the city on well-worn public trails, but today he took on a 4K hike with a gain in elevation of 250m.

Mum was in her element, having grown in the shadow of the mountains we hiked through and honed her rock climbing skills at the place where we peaked for the day.

She has regularly promised him that she will take him to Nepal and he in turn has promised to take her to Madagascar.  (I am not certain if it is the real one or the animated version he has in mind, but he has been earnest each time he has made the promise.) As we ascended the trail, Mum opted for the tougher trail and laid out the courtesies and the strategies of the hiking trails: step between, not on, the roots and rocks that obstruct the way; step aside for the faster hikers and make sure you say, "You're welcome," to those who thank you; to roll a needle between your fingertips and know that it is from a spruce by square edges make the roll rough.

I could see a long-dormant side of my wife resurfacing as she had a chance to initiate Gabriel into a long-held passion that she has set aside over (at least) the last four years and is now getting the opportunity to share the fundamentals of.  Whether or not he takes up this passion to the same extent that his mother has, it is a thrill to see that side of Mum emerge for him and flesh out one of the main characters in his life while she rekindles a spark that has idled for too long. He will see her, eventually, as more than just a provider and healer but as someone who has lived with this particular passion: to hike, to climb, to travel and so many other things that he still does not know about her. Perhaps there is knowledge of this in him already, aspects of her that will resonate and possess a trace of deja vu in a story she will tell about her achievements or hard-earned scrapes on rock-face.

He climbed his first big climb easily and with more enthusiasm than fatigue.  When we got to the top he was preoccupied with dogs that had made it to the top, but he did take note of the rock climbers who ascended by the toeholds that took them even higher than we went.  He confessed to preferring the hike down, despite the utilitarian scenery of an old fire road setting the background instead of the rock staircases and the approaching roar of waterfalls. Don't we all, though?

More importantly, Mum is already eager to get the next hike in sooner than later and is sorting through the terrain of the mountains and parks that formed the backyard of her youth and the landscape of her imagination. One thing that seems possible or even evident as Gabriel closes in on age four, is that we will be sharing more of ourselves on ventures such as this. It will be good to show more of ourselves to him as time goes on.

Mom and Dad Dare to Get a Babysitter

Letting ourselves out of the house, as adults, sans Dude, took us some time.  After a few months of having the memory of the clunker of a movie Tower Heist and an indulgent trip to Five Guys as our last "date," just hours before Nadine conceded we ought to go to the hospital just to see if everything was okay, we let ourselves go out for an evening to see the Blue Man Group.  The tickets were purchased long before Gabriel was born and it was the night of or night before my birthday.

Gabriel has been a low maintenance little guy almost straight out of the gate, but we still felt reluctant to not so much trust him with anyone as to ask for the favour or impose on anyone who dared to offer.  Even so, we settled on asking close friends first rather than asking one lone teenager to take him on. We basically enlisted a team: mother, father and their then 4-year-old who had been doting on him since his arrival and may have been ready to shoo her parents home to take over.  Instead, her parents shooed us out before we could complete our eighth utterance of the double checking, "Any questions?", with the assurance that they'd babysat before, or something like it and that Gabriel was in good hands.  We reviewed all of the things that might occur and reiterated our desired turn in routine and time as we retreated.

We trotted off to see Blue Man Group at a theatre that was a 12-minute walk away from home.  I'm still not sure if we would have let ourselves out that night if it was a 20-minute walk or drive.  We sat and never really allowed ourselves to acknowledge or enjoy the fact that we were out for the night. For the first part of the evening my cell phone sat on my thigh and kept glancing at it on a constant basis.  Eventually, the show grabbed a bit more of my attention, but (no offence intended) I never quite got fully immersed in the program.

We returned home after 2 hours and 23 minutes of entertainment, walk there and sprint back to find that the dude was sleeping as he was intended, but that the routine we had requested had not been followed to the letter.  Our "sitters" varied the routine as they were comfortable with and Gabriel responded well and, much to our surprise, was not thrown off kilter by the variation. There was, it seemed, even a broadening of horizons after the 4 1/2 months of being locked into the patterns that my wife and I established for ourselves.

It was not only good for us to get out, but it was good to realize that we did not need to be spot-welded to our routine.

We are still on our first hand when it comes to counting the times we've left Gabriel with sitters, other than my in-laws, for a night out whether it is dinner, a movie or something else but we are getting a little more daring.  Last week we even arranged to have that competent team of mother, father and now-8-year-old take on the first stage of the babysitting until a teenager - yes a teenager but she has graduated high school and is headed to university in a few weeks - could get to our place after finishing her day job.  We did spend a good part of the night texting to the team and the teen to ensure that the handover went as smoothly as it did and to let her know our ETA at the end of the show and we even allowed ourselves to be out for 5 hours.  We first used our new solo babysitter last October and we plan to use her again in November while we make a 12-minute walk to see a show...