Saturday Lessons

The morning was not quite what I hoped. It did not turn into a sitcom domino of disasters, spills and snowballing delays.  There was a stagnancy and lack of enthusiasm or direction. After not getting to bed until an hour and a half past his bedtime the previous night -- the lad too tired to even know how to cooperate through the wind down routine and calling his mother (and not ME) a "bully" at one heated point -- there is a familiar, odd perversion of the biological clock that ensures he gets up early whenever he goes to bed late.  He was not particularly difficult, but that lingering sluggishness buried any momentum toward preparing for the day and getting ready for music class as quickly as possible.

I had been telling myself the night before that he was likely to wake early and that while it could be a long day with occasional crankiness, it was best to find some way to just 'roll with it' -- not exactly my strong suit. Nadine has work today and her own routine gets her out the door before we really need to get going. Gabe and I have an extra 10-15 minutes before we have to head to the LRT and we are booted, toqued and gloved with the promise that he has the pep to run up the hill. As we approached the station, our train pulled up at the platform and Gabriel started talking about the need to run to the train.

 "You never run at the train," calmly telling something that I have had to say a few times to him.

 "We can run, we can get it."

I have always padded our music class routines with the possibility of a missed train and was able to hold my ground and hope that he can pick up on my calm lack of urgency and get the lesson that he should not run to catch an approaching train. We chorused our exchange of "never" and "we can make it" a few times until the train pulled away. We had 12 minutes until the next train; enough time to return an overdue (roll with it, roll with it) Toopy and Binoo DVD to the library. That done, we returned to the platform to wait for the next train. 

There was a mother and son waiting as well; the son slowly working through the last dregs of a can of jalapeño Pringles. Gabriel asked me while eyeing the chips if we had snacks and the mother, with a chronic rasp the belied a more hardscrabble life, told him, "Of course! Everyone has snacks!"  In my case, snacks amounted to a chia-blackberry squeeze pack, some apple-cinnamon rice crackers and a Larabar, all of which I intended to dole it with a bit more discretion. I'm not sure if they satisfied his Pringle-whetted appetite.

The ride on the train is always a wonder for him. He kneels on his seat and looks out the window, over my shoulder at the sights that strobe by, percussive blurs of lampposts passing across the lenses of his glasses as he waits to see downtown.  I let him know that the Peace Bridge is coming into view and he shifts to look east as we cross the Bow River into downtown.

We get off and make our way to the bus stop for the next leg of the journey.  He enjoys taking the footsteps route across the Enmax grates in the sidewalk but he finds the individual trucks and and buses too noisy.  Perhaps it is a matter of those noises standing out that much more without the cumulative din of weekday traffic as a base line.  We put the package for the chia-blackberry snack-beverage-gel thing in the garbage and come to our stop.

While at the stop, he finds a discarded (3/4 full!!) beverage cup from Subway and starts emptying it out through the straw, trailing a brown version of urination Braille across the snow, while I ask him to stop before he soaks and stickifies himself if the lid finally gives way under the weight and pressure of his shaking and art making.

In the middle of this, I tell him that Anakin Skywalker grows up to be Darth Vader. He hasn't seen any of the movies yet, but he is getting a steady diet of whatever Star Wars books he can get and he tells me he likes Anakin because of his heroism in the primer reader equivalent of Episode II. My disdain for Jake Lloyd, Hayden Christensen and the prequel trilogy prompt me to give my warning about who Anakin really is, but in the end he is a big Darth fan anyway. He stares at me slack-jawed for a moment and I wonder if I have permanently cast myself or him as the spoiler of all stories.  He is undaunted by the revelation and I smirk at his command of the Star Wars canon, recalling my own ability to devote so much mental real estate to hockey trivia when I was in elementary school.

I also taught him the phrase "catch air" during a particularly bumpy ride on the bus. He is puzzled by this and points out that his mouth was closed and I give the example of a kite catching air and y to make the distinction between catching air and catching your breath.  With each bump that follows, he points out that he has indeed caught air again.

With those two lessons passed from father to son, we arrive at music class and I file my train-rushing lesson for later and later again.

After music, the day continues with a bus ride to pizza for lunch. The Saturday pizza tradition goes back to Gabe's bucket phase and it has been nice to see him grow into the routine and manage to eat half of his pizza. Lately, when we take the bus, he insists on taking position in the very back of the bus.  The back row was a factor contributing to how much air we caught on the shuttle bus and with the 73, there is often a character of some sort who Gabriel has no timidity about.  Today, it is a man with an air cast on his foot and a surreptitious can of beer that he keeps hidden in his nicotine stained hands rather than sipping from openly, his deference to authority heightened in front of the 4-year-old.  He talks about how he broke his leg at work and how has myriad rods and screw in his leg and is going to be laid up for about 14 weeks. I wonder how much mature content Gabriel actually absorbs here in the backseat and I look ahead to rides he will have by himself. I'll be better served by deft interrogation than backseat prohibition when those days come. Perhaps I'll have to trade him today's character for whoever he ended up sitting with.

Lunch is uneventful as he zones out in front of a Paw Patrol marathon on the iPad while my lunch time cronies sort through the bishop's gaffe on LGTBQ rights a week earlier. Gabriel only raises his eyes from the inane puppies to greet one of the staff in the restaurant, who has seen him regularly since he was in the bucket phase.  They have an indelible connection and when he sees her, he rises from his spot on the bench, strides over me and gives her a huge hug, feet off the bench and pressing as much warmth into her as he can.

On the LRT home, he finally catches up on the sleep he passed up on at 6:20 this morning and when I turn to tell him we are at our station he is out, face planted firmly into the back of the seat. Now in the hang of rolling with it, I read until we go all the way to the end of the line in Tuscany and commence the return trip back to the southeast. I watch him sleep calmly and with a stillness that makes me tune my senses for the confirmation of each light breath, something I have not done since he was just a few months old.

After about 45 minutes, he bolts out of his repose and looks around, all bewildered and bedheaded. We get off to make to catch the train home and the lad still finds himself out of sorts.  We wait for the train to takes us back to the northwest and he needs to be held and comforted, such is his state. He is still tired and uncertain of where he is and how he ended up in this unfamiliar place under these circumstances. The nascent independence he asserts all too often and in such unexpected ways is gone and for this moment he his younger and vulnerable. I manage to roll with it and as he burrows into me, I let him know that he is getting heavy. It is a warning as much for me as him that those cuddling totes across long distances are getting harder and we are perhaps down to the last few.

And I tell myself once again, to roll with it.  Somehow.

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.

Dilemmas on Movie Night

Yesterday, Gabriel cracked the code.

Nadine and I were spelling "movie" and he had asked as if that was what we were talking about. The bit of progress aside, the recent institution of family movie night has raised some challenges as we ponder what types of movies he is ready for.

We have watched movies off and on for quite a while, making cautious selections from our collection of animated films and each time carefully confirming that a movie is rated-G and then going a step further to check on IMDB to review what parts of the films cause concern. There are instances where language, behaviour, violence or some other combinations of events and scenarios in a film cause parents some concern.

Given Disney's propensity for killing off mothers, I have had my own experience trying to cover Gabriel's eyes during the start of Finding Nemo where Coral and Marlin encounter the barracuda and have been wary of how he has dealt with deaths in the movies that he has seen so far.  He has not been particularly scarred by any of those events, especially if it occurs to the villain in a movie.  A few weeks back when he was watching The Princess and the Frog he remained rapt as the villain of the movie met his fate at the hands of some shadowy and threatening New Orleans-themed voodoo ghost types who sought mafia-variety payback. He slept to bed that night without interruption or drama.

He was not shaken by the scene nor by other deaths or peril that he has seen in the movies that he has watched.  If I recall correctly, and my mother would be the only one to correct me on this, I was not that particularly troubled by the death of Bambi's mother when I saw it.  I haven't seen the movie since it made its rotation in the Disney catalogue at that point of my childhood in the early to mid-1970s but while I remember the scene spoiling the mood of the movie, I ultimately was able to accept it as part of the course of events.

Gabriel, however, is particularly sensitive to the movies that he watches and can get caught up in what he is watching. When we took him to the cinema for the first time, for Inside Out, he was particularly emotional when Bingbong was left behind in the memory dump... (oops, spoiler alert?) and we assured him that Bingbong was not really dying, not in the literal sense of the word. He has been quick to point out when he is relieved to have a happy ending or when the bad guys were particularly unpleasant, as was the case in The Minions.

As we make the movie viewing more of a routine, we are that much more conscious of what we choose to show him and I find myself that much more sensitive to what he has already seen.  Apart for my aversion for the character product purchasing mania that the Cars movies have induced, I find myself looking that much more critically at the violence in the second instalment's James Bond tribute. After holding off on The Incredibles, despite its G-rating, and concluding that the Star Wars series is going to be years down the road, I'm conscious of already introducing him to, oddly enough, G-rated violence that has influenced him more than I would like.

I am not making him watch My Little Pony for the next ten years, but I feel more compelled to carefully vet my choices for all of those little things that I ought to be conscious of rather than simply contenting myself with my appreciation of a film's quality and artistic merits. I've been conscious of things that peeve me, but there are so many other things to bear in mind. The movie nights will continue of course and I look forward to the occasions when, years from now, I'll introduce him to my favorites. In the meantime, I'll try to ensure that we talk about the movies that we watch rather than rush him off to bed at the end of the show.

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.

Halloween

Apart from the haunted traditions of the day, Halloween is also an occasion where I recall the countdown, as it were, to Gabriel's arrival four years ago. He was due on October 31 and, though we have dodged a lifetime of costumed birthday parties, it still prompts reminiscing and reflection as we prepare for his non-Halloween birthday party next week. Among the recollections is the regular checking in with close friends who were due around the same time. The possibility that the boys could have been delivered at the same time did not occur and Gabriel and our friends' son are actually 2 1/2 weeks apart.

After appearances as a heavily padded beaver (2013) and the Scooby Doo (2014) for his first two Halloweens, Gabriel turned himself out in a fireman costume and headed out on Halloween night full of excitement and patrolled the neighbourhood with abandon for 2 1/2 hours. There were a few houses where he was rendered timid by the more ghoulish decorations, but for the most part he dashed from door to door excited to accumulate as much candy as he could.

The acknowledgement of his fireman costume was consistent with the sardonic, "Here to put out the fire?", comments from those passing the evening by their fires with a potable of some warmth or strength able to bring a smirk of amusement to my face while Gabriel was too preoccupied with the reception part of the tradition to respond to any variations in the ritual. Those adult gatherings around a cozy fire was just one of the many differences that have indicated how Halloween has changed since my childhood. Despite the post-Tylenol caution that we have adhered to since 1982 and the consciousness about the sweets that we are ever-vigilant of, Halloween has gone off the scale for its scope.  The level of Halloween decoration continues to elevate each year and is starting to challenge Christmas. I suspect that there is a crew of factory workers somewhere in China huddled around their Saturday evening drinks puzzling over why exactly they had to make the plastic limbs that they were churning out for so many front lawns this year.

Throughout the evening we stayed at the end of the sidewalk, my eyes straying to to hockey game to get an update on the score, and prompting Gabriel to say "trick or treat," "Happy Halloween," or, most importantly, "Thank you," while he stood alone with stranger after stranger for these encounters. There were a few times where he seemed to forget what to say, but just as many where the hosts at the door called back to us, "he did," to our admonitions if we thought he forgot. He lasted much longer than we anticipated based on everything else he had done throughout the day, including a terse moment or two at his morning music class when he noticed that other kids in fireman costumes actually had a whistle as a part of their ensembles.

His night ended with a climactic moment that left him gobsmacked as a passing fire truck, having spotted him by the reflective tape on his coat, slowed down and flashed its lights while the crew waved to him.  He was truly starstruck and disoriented by the flash and wave and seemed uncertain if he was supposed to join them or not.

There are still things about the tradition for him to learn.  We did our best to teach him not to eat his candy until we got home and he has a very trusting tendency to walk right in an open door wherever he visited.  Hopefully we will break him of that habit by next year. By the time we got home, Gabriel was ready for bed. His haul included six pounds of candy and chocolate and we have not troubled ourselves to weigh the chips.  However, two days after his haul, Gabriel has not expressed any interest in or desire for the treats.