GRIZZLY PEAR
The kids were playing and laughing on the swings and the slides at the playground.
Honestly, I think they were having just as much fun as if they were at an amusement park.
Going on vacation is not cheap, but it is easy.
The harder endeavor is finding such joy at home, day to day.
Last week, I had my first conversation with my boy. He said “ba ba ba” and I responded “di di di”. to which he responded “爸爸爸” (daddy!) and I respond “对!弟弟弟!” (correct! little brother!).
We repeated this a few more times.
Both of us seemed very self satisfied after the exchange.
At least we both had big grins on our faces.
After arriving at night, and then spending the first day at California Adventure, we spent our third night in Anaheim and finally were inside the park enjoying the fireworks show at Disneyland.
My daughter and I were outside of “it’s a small workload after all” watching the light show on the facade and listening to the music.
After a big burst (enough to be a finale anywhere else), they pulled up Let it Go and burst out the fake snow machine as the show kept going.
She went wild.
When they call it the Magic Kingdom, they aren’t messing around. For all the insanity that comes with the park, these are the moments which you pay for.
The kids managed to entertain themselves for half an hour playing hide and seek.
He would climb onto the bed, crawl to the side where she was hiding between the bed and the wall, and then both of them would giggle uncontrollably for a moment.
Then he’d crawl to the other edge, threaten to fall off, and then I’d pick him up and put him back back to the ground.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Five years ago, while my wife and I were caught up in the maelstrom of being first time parents, we were suddenly struck by the reality check of the passage of a friend’s child.
It was a sobering reminder that there were no guarantees for how much time we would be given with our own daughter.
Since then, I’ve made a point to contemplate this uncertainty and hold the kids a little extra tight this time each year.
Yesterday afternoon, we found an old kite from a local kite festival. The extreme temperatures over the past three years in the garage had finally taken its toll on this dollar store giveaway.
It was was falling apart, but our daughter insisted on trying to fly this old kite. While we were running around the driveway unsuccessfully trying to get aloft one last time, I remembered that April had almost passed without taking stock of the brevity of life.
Time moves forward inexorably, but it is on us to savor the moment and keep our memories alive.
With the boy fighting a cold, my mom and I took the girl out to the park. As she climbed the play structures, I walked a few loops around the perimeter to get my daily two miles in for cardio.
I had forgotten my headphones so I was listening to my podcast on the phone’s speaker.
On the third loop at the other side of the park from the playpen I heard a giggle over the noise, looked up, and saw my girl running across the lawn.
She had decided to chase down her dad, and I’d recognize that laugh anywhere I heard it, whether I was expecting it or not.
She goes up fast.
And he’s no longer an infant either.
Time marches quickly.
If you blink, you only miss a day.
A couple more times and the years will have flown away.
I recently noticed that the boy would giggle when I did plié’s while holding him.
At first he won’t notice it, but after two or three of them, he will notice and anticipate the pattern. A smile will emerge and he really gets into it.
It’s an amazingly easy way to get a baby to laugh, though I fear this phase may be just as fleeting.
This weekend, our little guy got slammed with a full on cold for the first time.
Fever, chills, sweats, cough, phlegm, the whole package. Poor guy was totally miserable. I’ve never seen him so bummed out.
A couple days later he smiled and crawled towards a box of Duplo blocks.
It’s easy to forget that normal can be a really big deal until it disappears for a moment.
The other day, I held my friend’s baby, who was born a month and a half after our little guy.
The personality of the two kids are quite distinctly different, but it was reinforced by the difference in weight, and most noticeably the smell of the hair.
I have never had a great sense of smell, but in those few minutes, I could not get over the unsettling feeling of simultaneously something very familiar and very different.
I’m certain the feeling was mutual.