Dad Turns 40 Tomorrow!

Hey, buddy!  It's Dad.  I know I don't write here often, but some days seem to offer prime examples of life with you that are worthy of documentation.  Today was worth mentioning partly because of you being you, but also because it's the very last day of my thirties.  Yep, your old Daddy turns 40 tomorrow!

So how did we spend the last day of my (30 <= x < 40) decade?  We had a lot of fun!  When you woke up this morning, I was just about to take a shower.  I asked you if you wanted to join me, and you said "take a shower!" and then immediately stepped into the bathtub and stood there waiting for me.  I insisted that you sit on the potty first to see if you needed to pee.  You happily cooperated and sat down, but as usual there was no pee to be had.  We'll just have to keep working on that.

As we were drying off after our shower, I asked you if you were hungry and what you thought we should have for breakfast.  Without hesitation, you simply said, "peanut butter toast".  (Actually, in your pronunciation, it was "pay bay toast" but we've discovered that I am especially proficient in translating Avery-speak.)

When we got downstairs, the first thing you did was grab the toaster from the cabinet and take it into the living room.  Then you grabbed and handed me the bag of bread, saying, "Bread.  Open bread."  So I did, and handed you a slice.  Then you brought me the peanut butter jar.  "Pay bay...open," you said, and I did.  Then you ran in other room and put the bread and peanut butter jar on the floor near the toaster.

This is progress.  Three days ago you
mangled the bread while doing this.

Then you sat down and looked at it, seemingly confused as if you realized something was missing but wasn't sure what.  I let you ponder it for a while before I asked, "Do you need a knife?"

"Mife!" you exclaimed in your "a-ha!" moment.  I handed you one and you went straight to work spreading peanut butter on the bread all by yourself.  You only needed help folding it in half.  The rest was your work entirely.

You ate your "pay bay" sandwich while you watched Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol, and Wallykazam -- your three very favorite shows.  In the meantime, I sat with my laptop doing some work for my job.  After your shows were over, you were hungry again, so all by yourself, you got the popcorn popper out of the cabinet (all three parts of it), the bag of popcorn kernels from the counter, and the large popcorn bowl.  It took four trips between the kitchen and living room, but you successfully gathered everything needed to make popcorn with the air popper.  You handed me the bag of popcorn and said, "Open".  It was obvious what you wanted, so I helped you measure out the right amount.  Then you took over and put it in the popper, put the popper together, and moved the bowl in place to catch it.  All that was left was to plug in the popper, so I did that for you.

When the mail came, we went out to get it like we always do.  (You get mad if we get the mail without you.)  It was a gorgeous spring day -- sunny and around 60F.  After we got back inside, I sat down to get some more work done, but you kept looking out the window and saying "mackinside".  After repeating this a few times, you were getting frustrated that I wasn't doing anything about it.

So I tried to figure out what you were saying.  "Mackinside?  You mean 'back inside'?  We are back inside."

You repeated more slowly, "Maggin...side."

"Maggin?  You mean wagon?  Wagon ride?"

You were glad I finally got it.  "Yeah, wagon side, yeah!"  You ran into the living room and pointed at your jacket ("green coat" you call it) on the coat rack.  So we put on our jackets, got the wagon out of the garage, and I took you on the loop around the neighborhood.  When we passed the schoolyard where all the kids were playing, you wanted to get out and join them.  I made you stay in the wagon and told you we could go to the park instead.  So you sat back down and enjoyed the ride around the rest of the subdivision.

When we reached the intersection where we had to decide on a direction, I asked you, "Do you want to go home or to the park?"

You thought hard about this decision, repeating, "Home or park...home or park..."  Then you pointed in the direction of the park and said, "Park, OK?"  I was extremely impressed that you knew where we were, because neither home nor the park are visible from the intersection, and I had given no indication of which of four directions home and the park were in.

So I pulled the wagon to the park.  The sky had clouded up by this point, but since we were only a few blocks from home, I didn't worry much about it.  We ran, climbed, swung, and slid non-stop for over an hour.  The video shows about two minutes of that.

You actually asked to swing today.  I guess
you've gotten over your dislike of swings.

It's probably worth mentioning that this trip to the park was significant in a couple of ways.  First, you went down the "big slide" (the tallest slide in the bigger-kids' area) all by yourself several times.  You also enjoyed swinging in the baby swings, which is something that you weren't crazy about last year.

We also had a minor disagreement over the springy-rocking things.  I said the one on the left looks like a dinosaur.  You insisted that it's a dragon.  We agreed, however, that the one on the right is a silly-looking horse.  But silly or not, you enjoyed riding both of them.

We invite the reader to weigh in on the
debate: is this a dinosaur or a dragon?

Eventually, the clouds grew darker and it started to sprinkle.  Even though you were still having a blast, you didn't put up a fight this time when I said that it was going to rain so we had to hurry home -- fast, fast, fast!

Finally, the last thing I'll mention before posting this is what just happened right now as I was writing it.  Some fire truck sirens rang out in the distance, and you ran to the window, spread the curtains, and shouted "fire truck!" as you tried to see if you could spot it.

I said, "Yeah, that's a fire truck, but it's too far away for us to see it."

You were quiet for a moment, and then you softly said, "Rescue."  You probably learned that from watching PAW Patrol.

So tomorrow I venture forth into my forties.  By the time I'm out of them, you'll be twelve!  Crazy!  But man, we're going to have a great time getting there!