Pessimistic Optimism

One great thing about being a parent is the chance to be a witness to a child’s mental development.  The physical part’s pretty cool, too, but I’m hoping my fat gene doesn’t ever kick in for them.  That would just be another thing to blame on me when my kids’ psyches are raked through the coals during therapy in young adulthood.  For the record, my fat genes didn’t show their puffy face until I was about twenty-two; it’s amazing what a positive effect drinking and not exercising can have on one’s life.

As I was saying about mental development, my daughter’s skills and abilities have grown astronomically this year.  I’d like to give credit to her teachers at preschool for these amazing advancements, but I won’t, because it’s probably just a coincidence that this has happened since she’s gone there.  I know that I’m the catalyst that triggered her brilliance to come to the forefront.  I can’t back this statement up with facts, but take my word, I just know it to be true.  How could it not be?

With my son’s advancement, I think it’s my wife’s doing, because I have to blame someone.  I don’t mean to infer that he’s not doing well, because he is… in his own way.  This week he loves letters, not the paper kind with threats of retribution on them that arrive in envelopes once a week; the kind that make up those futile words.  Actually, he loves a letter: W.  I don’t know why, but his whole world’s about “W”.  “W” this, “W” that.  I’m sick of the freaking thing.  It’s not even in his name, first, last, or middle.  I tried getting him to appreciate all the letters by subjecting him to my singing the alphabet song in F-flat, but that proved to be futile.  He tunefully sang back at me, “ABW KLW RWS WOP XYZ W”.  What’s a parent to do?

The bright side of this is that he’s progressed, because last week his favorite letter was 3.

Wow, it seems like yesterday that I last posted, that or 106 yesterdays.  Well, I’m back and I’m ready to start filling your heads with thoughtful anecdotes about my family and my life in general.  Okay, I’m back and I’m ready to spout my views, spill my guts and make you weep.  Okay, okay, here’s the truth: I’m back and I’m going to write about anything that I find interesting whether it bores you to tears, tickles your fancy, or just makes you want to cry or laugh or shake your head or pull your hair…

Since I’ve been away for a while, I’ll try to catch you up on my life.  This is your last chance to look away before I start droning on, so don’t say I didn’t warn you if you pass out or fall in love (with my writing).

The kids have both changed dramatically since my last post.  My daughter has become an emotional roller coaster that knows exactly what she wants out of life and is not afraid to go out and take it, whether it’s hers or someone else’s.  This can be a little troublesome if the item in question is expensive or hard to conceal, but assertiveness is very important in today’s child-eat-child world, so I can deal with it. 

My son’s goals are very similar to his big sister’s.  In fact, he wants exactly what she wants out of life, but only while she possesses it.  This is a bit more of a hassle for me than my daughter’s issues because I care if someone takes her stuff, but I’m learning how to work with my daughter to appease the boy.  We throw out some red herrings and the boy is as happy as Heather Mills is this week, and like the former Mrs. McCartney, it keeps him occupied for a little while until there’s something else to be coveted.  Luckily for us that just might be a plastic frog or a drumstick, as opposed to song royalties or castles.

As for my beautiful wife, she’s just as wonderful as before and still tolerates me, usually.  She’s a great mother and hardly scolds me about my lousy parenting skills unless they are life threatening, which isn’t very often, you know, once, maybe twice a week.

My dog’s just as loyal as always and still holds a higher standing in the house than me, but I can deal with that.  Well, I have to deal with it because what’s the alternative, dog stew?  I’m kidding; I prefer chops.  Does anyone have any golden retriever recipes?  I’m kidding again; I really do love my dog as much as the rest of my family.  Okay, not as much as the rest of the family, but almost as much.  Kind of how the Baldwin’s feel about Stephen, but a little more.

As for me, I put my writing on hiatus to pursue an important goal: becoming a mime.  I was quite successful, actually too successful; I was stuck in that freaking imaginary box and couldn’t get out for days.  This kind of stripped me of my passion to be the next Marcel Marceau, but I did lose ten pounds.

The last paragraph was total B.S., but I do plan on making this site a regular thing again.  Check back sooner than 106 days (early July), because I might get on a roll, or at least a tailspin.  Huh?

Today, I experienced something for free that I heard some people pay good money for.  Not me, just some people and maybe not good money.  Let’s just say it has something to do with the words “shower” and “golden”, but not necessarily in that order.

Before you get your panties in a bunch and judge me, let me explain myself.  It might be as gross as you think, but probably not as seedy.  I mean, it’s not like I enjoyed it… much.

A typical day took place before this, you know: cereal for breakfast with the kids; watch Sesame Street; kick the dog; and give the kids a bath.  The end of bath-time proved to be my downfall.  While drying my son off outside the tub something just didn’t feel right.  A warm sensation spread across my thigh and something caught my attention peripherally.  It was a yellow spritz of liquid traveling through the air with no concern of where or whom it hit.  My slug-like reaction time helped soak the throw rug and myself before I could plug the stream with the towel.

I swear the boy just laughed when I informed him of his offense.  And when I told him that it was gross he mockingly made a face and said “Arrh” a couple times.  I don’t think he comprehended the utter disgust I felt at that moment even when I punished him by placing him back in the tub to be washed again.  It probably didn’t help that he loves being in the tub and that I really wasn’t utterly disgusted, maybe not even mildly disgusted, but he doesn’t need to know that.

Now that the moment’s passed I’ve had a few moments to ponder what took place today.  My son PEED on me.  My son PEED on me and LAUGHED about it.  Now that I got that off my chest, er, I mean, leg, we can all get back to our lives again.  I mean, it was only a little pee, well maybe not a little, but it was only pee.  Like I said, some people pay for this kind of thing.  Not me though…   

Not many things in life are as easy as being a parent.  I mean kids these days practically raise themselves.  Because my children really have it so together, I try to stay in the background as much as possible unless they need my help with something small, like: eating, drinking, dressing, or defecating.

Occasionally they do need guidance because they are only four and two and I try to expel my astuteness as succinctly as possible.  It sounds easier than it actually is because I can really drag out an explanation if I’m in my chair of wisdom.  That particular chair’s located at a friend’s house where I’ve been known to enjoy a few cocktails, and my kids are mostly at my house so they usually aren’t put through that arduous assault on their listening devices, aka ears.  Today was one of those times that a reasonable adult was needed to point my little girl in the right direction and fortunately my wife was the one that was home.  Our little angel wants a tattoo.  Yes, a freaking tattoo.  A freaking tattoo on her freaking back.

It really was a good thing that I wasn’t the one home because for a moment I thought that it’d be cool to have the only preschooler, that I know of, with a tattoo.  Her juvenile choice of ink brought me back to earth so I didn’t even try to persuade my wife.  She wants candy corn on her shoulder.  I mean, let’s be real here, that’s such a time-sensitive piece of body art.  It’d just look kind of stupid in April.  Besides, the girl’s four-years-old and everyone knows that bad life choices should wait until your at least ten or eleven.

I’m glad that I could be there for my non-branded little girl, again.  She’s very smart but my infinite guidance is always waiting in the wings if she needs it.  Lucky girl!

Something just didn’t seem right when we arrived at my daughter’s school today.  There was a different vibe to the place and an odd odor floated about.  The owner of the school walked outside to speak with the mothers and me while we were swapping recipes.  This was unusual in itself on two counts.  Number one: the teacher usually greeted us; and B. the school actually has an owner.

The forty-something dictatoreducator advised us that due to a plumbing problem, class was cancelled today.  When I attended St. GiveMeYo$ I thoroughly enjoyed surprise days off because of things like snowstorms, water main breaks or faculty arrests, but my daughter reacted quite differently; she was distraught.  She couldn’t get it through her pretty little braided head that she was being denied access to HER classroom.

It took us a little while to walk back to the van because my studicious genius kept stopping to see why she had to be with Daddy and her brother instead of her school friends and teachers.  She wanted this nightmare to be over.  That’s when my sensitive side took over.

“Honey, school’s closed today.  That’s just the way it is.”

“I don’t want it to be closed,” she said.  “I’m the star of the week” (a rotating honor was bestowed upon her this week and she obviously looked forward to it).

“Me neither, beautiful, but it’s out of my control and you’ll still be the star of the week tomorrow.” 

Unfortunately the conversation didn’t end there.

“Why is my school closed?”

I figured that honesty was the best policy with a four-year-old so I explained that the toilets were broken.

“The kids won’t have to use the toilet,” she said.

Wow, that would be a solution if all the preschoolers adhered to my daughter’s proclaimation.  Unfortunately the teachers and the “owner” probably wouldn’t take her word for it so I didn’t bother making this suggestion.

“I’m sorry, big girl, but you can’t go to school today.”

That’s when the water works kicked in.  By this time we were at the van and she didn’t want to admit defeat so she refused to climb on in so I lifted her somewhat gently and tried unsuccessfully to get her seated comfortably.  She immediately ran the three feet across the van and stood in front of her now screaming brother.  I guess he already knows that old statement misery loves company.  At this point I considered joining in but decided the best thing to do was distract them and strap her in before she knew what hit her.  The hitting her’s only a figure of speech so don’t call the authorities just yet.  My “look at the hippo” stunned them just enough to give my ears a break and gave me the opportunity to strap the dejected princess in her car seat.

Her despair really set in as we drove away.

“Someone’s bringing a snack and I’m not going to eat it with my friends,” she said.

That’s when my supreme ingenuity kicked in.

“Would you like to have a special snack with your friend in the seat next to you when we get home?”

Her face lit up and she giggled. 

“Daddy, you mean my brother can be my friend and we can have a snack together?”

“Exactly.  We can pretend that he’s just your friend and you can have a snack and some juice together.”

At this point the doldrums left the vehicle and she speculated what the snack might be and so did I.  Hopefully I could meet her expectations with something out of the ordinary.  

Back at the ranch I rustled the kids into the house with promises of a fun snack.  They eagerly climbed into their chairs as I filled bowls with trail mix that had M&Ms in it and they were ecstatic.

My daughter’s passion for learning and socializing pleased me to no end, but the fact that a good snack is the only cure for her morose attitude might lead to a weight problem if we have a harsh winter with a lot of snow days this year.  Does Jenny Craig have a preschool program?

I’m not much of a dieter so take what I have to say with a (multi-) grain of salt and a pound of sugar.

I took the daughter to BJ’s the other night to do a little bulk shopping because we were down to seventeen rolls of Charmin and two 19.7 oz. boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios at the house so it was obviously time to replenish the shelves in our basement. 

We hit a little bump in the road in the beginning of our excursion, as my daughter puked in the parking lot before we went inside.  This was kind of odd because our boy’s usually the puker (see Yummy, Blleh, Bbllleeehhh, Yummy), but she’s a trooper and decided to carry on with the mission without any prodding from me.  All did seem well when we headed in because her stomach must’ve been empty by the size of the puddle in front of the Lexus’s driver’s door parked next to us.

After the quick cleanup in the men’s room the two of us loaded mass quantities of things we use at the house into the cart.  You know, like, four tubes of toothpaste, two huge jugs of refillable anti-bacterial soap, eight tubs of Vaseline, six jars of mayo and an apple.  Just things we needed… I thought.  I should have brought a list.

I knew that we needed wheat bread so we headed toward that area with high hopes of getting what we needed.  No such luck.  After pacing back-and-forth between the three bread aisles for about thirty minutes I came to the conclusion that they were out of the butter-top version I usually buy; all that was left was the whole-grain stuff, which I know is good for you, but tastes like a sponge, or cardboard, or something non-food like.  You may ask, have you actually tasted it, and the answer would be a resounding YES… I think. 

I thought about stopping somewhere else on the way home, but it was almost my little girl’s bedtime and I figured that we could handle whole-grain for once.  Let me rephrase that, the kid’s and my wife could handle whole-grain for once so I grabbed a loaf and headed to the checkout.

This short story made long was what brought me to my current state of fear.  I discovered yesterday that I didn’t buy the whole-grain loaf; I bought multi-grain instead by accident.  I really don’t know anything about multi-grain besides that it smells like PLAY-DOH, but I did read on the package it’s a great source of fiber.  This kind of scares me because my kids don’t really need any assistance in the bathroom.  Well, not that kind of assistance.  If anything, I’d like to curb their output if possible.  Even though this stuff went through my mind I fed it to both of them anyway.  My son’s eaten it yesterday and today with his jelly and peanut butter and my daughter today only with hers.

The boy has gone dump-less since before his first taste of this flavorless vessel for things you normally put on a sandwich, such as jelly, peanut butter, lunch meat, salmon or cheese, so I’m hoping it isn’t some sort of time-released colon bomb that goes off in 48 hours because I think the load would exceed the maximum capacity of his pull-up.  If this faux food affects people differently, my daughter might be in a bind at preschool right now if it hits her just right so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. 

It seems to be out of my control so it’s just a waiting game.  Hopefully it’s worth the wait.

My daughter’s new to the whole school scene this year so we like to interrogate her when she gets dismissed from her daily 2 1/2 hour ordeal.  We ask open-ended questions like What’d you do today, What did you learn, Is your teacher a bitch, and What kids did you play with.

Her answer to the last question floored me. 

“Kids are not supposed to play with other kids in preschool.” 

It kind of inferred an answer to question number three until my daughter revealed the origin of this edict through further prodding, er questioning.

“Who said that kids aren’t supposed to play with kids?” I asked.

“I did,” she said.  “Kids are only supposed to play with toys by themselves at preschool.”

There had to be more to this so I asked a leading question.

“Did one of your teachers say this?”

“No, Daddy.  I came up with this by myself.”

“Are you sure that your teacher didn’t say this while she was screaming at the class?” I asked innocently.

“No Daddy, the teacher doesn’t scream at the class, she talks nicely.”

After some reassurance my wife and I convinced her that it’s okay to play with other kids at preschool and that in fact her teacher’s not a bitch and I really need to accept the fact that my little girl’s in someone else’s capable hands part of the day.  At least it’s only part of the day… for this year at least.

My little girl’s growing up way too fast.  It seems like she just went to school for the first time last week.  Oh yeah, she did just go to school for the first time last week.  So much has changed about her, or me, depending on whom you ask.  I’ve caught her practically making out… twice. 

The first time she lip-locked the boy across the street, which was okay, sort of, because he moved away later that day.  No, it wasn’t because of some futile threat I might have or have not thrown at him that said something about castration.  He’s six, so he probably doesn’t even know what the word means.  I probably shouldn’t have drawn pictures for him.

The second time happened right in front of me, again.  This girl needs a little dose of modesty added to her Fruit Loops in the morning.  While waiting for the teacher to open the preschool door my angel planted a big wet one on a kid in her class.  Luckily for the kissee, he acted like he didn’t enjoy it so I didn’t have to play Pictionary with him, I’ll just keep my eye on the little miscreant.

Another sign of growing up or at least maturing came from something she told my wife.  A more accurate term might be im-maturing even if that’s not a real word.  She explained to my lovely wife that a toot, AKA a fart, flatulation or air biscuit is made up of two poops in her body smashing together.  She surmised this from the information she received about thunder coming from two clouds crashing together.  This kid might have a future in science or as a shock jock.  I prefer the former unless she goes into syndication with the latter.

As a parent for life, I guess I’ll just have to get used to the kids “growing up”, but I don’t have to like it.  Then again, there must be some advantages to them getting older.  Is four to early to mow the lawn?

When I’m not playing with my wife and/or kids or writing I’m probably working at my 48 hours-a-week side job, firefighting.  This time-killer gives me an inside view of what many people do in extreme situations or at least stressful ones.  Unfortunately, I’m disappointed often by a lot of people’s attitudes toward emergency situations, their lack of realization that it is an emergency situation, or the fact that I have to see these people sans make-up or clothing a little too often. 

I’d like to rhetorically ask you some questions about some of the things I encounter on a daily basis.   

If four firefighters with medical equipment were in an elevator would you get on and press a lower floor?  What if you were about to be late for work or really had to pee?

I hope your answer to both questions was a resounding no, but I know some people are oblivious to their surroundings whatever the situation is before them.  In fact, this happened to me the other day when a rude little man reached into the elevator and pressed four immediately after hearing us say we we’re going to eight so we kindly helped him out of the elevator doorway and left him behind to feel shame.  People like this are not only ignorant and selfish, but also downright pathetic and should be made to wait the next time something bad happens to them, like an axe to their forehead or a fire hose tied too tightly around their neck.

If an alarm’s ringing in your apartment building and firefighters are going in loaded with heavy equipment and SCBAs (air tanks) on their backs should you walk into the building and get in their way?  What if your dog or turtle was still in your apartment or you left the pigs’ knuckles in the frying pan?

Again, I hope you answered no.  Normal people get out of the way of firefighters during an emergency situation unless they have pertinent information to share, like which apartment the stove’s left on in or if their grandma’s doing yoga naked in 4B.  Some things you need to be mentally prepared for.

If an emergency vehicle’s driving with lights flashing and sirens blaring either behind you or coming towards you should you pull to the side of the road or at the least stop your vehicle before it’s on your ass?  What if you might end up sitting through another red light and might miss the first five minutes of Judge Judy as a result?

This time the answer should be yes unless you want a fire truck to do its best monster truck impression on your VW Jetta or you don’t need your hearing, which will be impaired by the air horn pressed incessantly until you are in our dust.  You probably won’t be shot the bird physically, but make it understood it is being sent telepathically fourfold.

Feel free to pass this information on to your friends, loved ones and local politicians, unless they’re in the airport restroom because they might take that for something else, the politicians that is (see Larry Craig, US Senator for Idaho).

Man’s best friend has a lot of good uses in this world.  Number one is probably being a, well, best friend, but after that our furry possessions perform numerous other tasks on a daily basis for their supposedly smarter two-legged dog license holders.

Like most dogs mine wears many hats, and he looks damn good in them, especially the Stetson accompanied by some spurs.  Never mind that, but he does serve many purposes for my family.

He’s a fantastic plaything for the kiddies, you know, something to pull at or climb on or just plain pet and he never shies away from them unless he sees them coming.  When he bucks them off when their hand or foot accidentally hits the right spot he looks in my direction for approval and I nod.  I figure that he needs to get his licks in, too.

Having our dog around fulfills a lot of basic needs at my house and none of them have anything to do with peanut butter.  His thick mane makes a great footrest which is mutually beneficial because my feet stay warm and my corns and warts and whatever the hell else is growing down there scratches his back for him.  Stress reliever is a job that my k-9 boy relishes, I think, because he always listens to me, most of the time, and no one else does, most of the time and this makes me feel good.  I didn’t even have to beat him to obey, much.

Fertilizer is a job title that most dogs take to heart.  Mine’s going for top dog in this field.  He’s so proficient at it that I share his talents with my neighbors when they’re sleeping or not home.  I have him do this because I think everyone should be empowered the same way I am every time I shovel up a load of yesterday’s Kibbles ‘n Bits.  It’s kind of like a Robin Hood thing, but has nothing to do with stealing or gold or anything similar to the story about that tight-wearing freak.

I have to admit that my four-legged boy isn’t as good at one of his chores, being a vacuum for dropped food.  The finicky pooch ignores the conveniently dropped veggies while scarfing up the chicken, steak or SPAM.  The sad part is that this was exactly the reason why we wanted a dog in the first place, sort of.

One of the most important things a dog can do is protect your home from intruders or Tony Danza.  A good watchdog’s priceless as long as he doesn’t eat you or one of your children or was previously owned by Michael Vick.  My family thought we had the best because he always barks loudly at people walking by or urinating in our bushes, that is until the other day.  It was just a regular night with my wife and I getting cozy on the couch using Fido as a footrest while watching The Girls Next Door when our child’s finger painting masterpiece sailed off of the kitchen wall and made an odd noise.  The not-so-brave doggy jumped up, stuck his tail between his legs and whimpered endlessly.  I guess that’s what we get for choosing a Golden Retriever.

One day ago was the one-year anniversary of my first post.  It almost seems like yesterday… plus 364 other days, which I decided to let the world have a peek at my writing.  In the past year I’ve hit the “publish” button 140 times, each one hurled my thoughts and meanderings into the depths of cyberspace for all to see and even scarier, to form an opinion on.  As the days went by and the posts accumulated it got easier to hit the button.  It went from indigestion to butterflies to anticipation to cockiness to apathy to butterflies and so on.

The decision for me to enter the blogosphere came easily after I talked to my nephew last summer about his entertaining blog manninchina.  For some reason, he validated the medium for me so thanks to him Pessimistic Optimism lives, in other words, if you don’t like what you see, he’s to blame.  Don’t upset him too much because I don’t like to fight with family… that’s bigger than me.

Writing somewhat true tales about my life as a father and husband came to me during a visit from an angel in my bedroom advising me that it was God’s will or it came on a whim.  Either way it’s difficult to remember what happened in my life before I started writing it down.  This decision was the most frightening one because I only wrote fiction before this and I wasn’t only putting my writing out there, my life would be on display, too… sort of.  After a year it’s easier for me to write about myself than characters I make up in my head, so I’m not sure if this is for the good or not.  It definitely hasn’t helped me further my fiction-writing career, but I intend to add a fiction page to the blog soon… hopefully.  That might get me in the right direction if the right person reads it.  Stephen or Nelson are you paying attention? 

If you’ve read this blog or others you probably noticed that some people like to comment on what’s posted.  So far, there have been 289 non-spam comments on this hopefully witty display of odd thoughts and stories.  I bet about a third of them came from my keypad, because I heard that acknowledging commentators is the proper thing to do if you want them to comment again or eat their freaking words in a shallow grave covered in chocolate sauce and maggots, but I digress.  One of these comments sent me into a tizzy that led to my most viewed, and probably stupidest post called Raw Chicken Good.  The comment from imhelendt was misinterpreted by my hypersensitive ego and sent me into an over-reaction because only I can pick on my parenting skills even though she really wasn’t.  The title of this post has made it my most viewed because people type “raw chicken” into their search engines just about everyday and my post is the seventh offering on Google as of today and has been as high as number two in the past.  This post has been viewed 804 times, which is probably about 700 more times than any other one yet to date.  It’s good to know that I can be associated with something of such great importance as raw chicken as opposed to world hunger or Quantum physics.

Aunt Weather is my number one commentator and for that she gets a great big wet one… from my dog which I know she’ll enjoy because he absolutely adores her and vice versa.  The person that gets a nod for being tied for the least comments is my beautiful wife.  She has commented here as often as almost every living person in the world, English speaking and otherwise, zero times.  I think she just doesn’t want to show me up, because she’s very funny and sexy and a great mother and wonderful spouse and whatever else give me brownie points.

Hits are something that a lot of bloggers like to watch.  It’s very sad and doesn’t mean a whole lot, but I like this, too.  My site received it’s 12,000th hit in just under a year, so I can say that I average 1,000 hits a month and I wouldn’t be exaggerating like I do in my posts, but I won’t get into what qualifies a hit to be a hit (just so you know, mine don’t count).  Twelve thousand hits might seem like a lot to a non-blogger, but some people get that in one day.  They must have a lot of friends or some kind of nudie thing going on, it couldn’t possibly be that they have an audience that likes to read them.  Some day I aspire to have at least three readers that aren’t reading my posts as an obligation, but that’s just wishful thinking.

An odd bonus of this blogging thing was that I hooked up with , which introduced me digitally to a few blogophiles that are hilarious, or on an off day, amusing.  One is known as Diesel at and various other sites, he also commandeers , and another is a chick from who is out there, in a good way.  Humor-blogs somehow lists Pessimistic Optimism  along side the heavy hitters of the humor blogging world without having a disclaimer on it that says only read this one if you are really bored and want to remain that way.  Another site and interesting person I discovered is a guy named Bill that writes a site called Dying mans daily journal, which is an in depth look at a person facing the inevitable.  That’s the uniqueness (word?) about blogs, they can be about anything whether it’s interesting or not as you can see by this site.

Thanks to everyone that’s perused my thoughts this past year and also to those that have read my blog.  I hope to post more often soon when my kids stop taking up all my time so check back in about twenty years. 

I am free at last, free at last.  My daughter has made me feel like a Gen X-er for the first time by permitting me to be a lazier father.  I’ve been waiting for this day for a while and today it finally arrived by surprise.

We have a swing set in our yard.  Said swing set is used a lot by both of my children, a few neighbor kids and one strange little fellow who sneaks in late at night, but we’ll leave him out of this.  My four-year-old always wants to be pushed while swinging and I get a little fed up with having to be the pusher.  I don’t know if you know this, but I have to get out of my comfortable hammock to push her every time, so I tried to teach her how to pump.  I’ve tried over and over, but it hasn’t sunk in, until today.

I’d like to take credit for this spectacular milestone, but it happened while I was in the pool.  I heard my name mentioned, you know, Daddy, while floating around so I peeked at my wonderful little girl swinging her little heart out perfectly.  It was pure poetry in motion, if you like that kind of thing, that is.

She caught my eye and shouted out with glee, “I’m swinging, Daddy.”

“You look glorious Little One, glorious,” I yelled.

Okay, okay, it was more like, “That’s great Little One, I’m very proud of you.”  A little encouragement can go a long way, especially if the activity makes my life easier.

My face was moist, but I think it was from me falling off my Spongebob float and had nothing to do with the idea of not having to leave the hammock again… unless the boy wants to swing, of course.