A Perfect Day

They don’t happen too often but when they do they tend to be simple, just like this past Saturday.

• Wake up at 6am to do yoga practice and prepare for morning class. Asana and seated meditation then shower and get dressed for class.
• 7:15am take Spike-ito out for a walk.
• 8:30am leave to teach morning yoga class. M-ito and Mom-ita are still asleep.
• 9:15-10:45am teach class – students are back from vacations, class is packed, and life is good.
• 11:30am back home for brunch with Mom-ita and M-ito.
• 12:30pm take Spike-ito out for walk with M-ito. We talk about Warhammer games (our newest father son obsession), school, life in general.
• 1:30-4:30pm lazing around on couch with M-ito, him watching Saturday afternoon TV shows, me napping on and off, Mom-ita reading, napping, cleaning.
• 5pm head out with M-ito to the dog run for the first time. Mom-ita is napping.
• 6-6:45pm Watch Spike-ito make friends and play at the dog run. M-ito at first watches from the bench trying to read his book. Then after five minutes of watching Spike-ito run, wrestle, crash into cement pylons, run, run, and run some more with his new pals, M-ito gets up and joins in. He chases Spike-ito then meets the other dogs, moves our stuff next to the other owners on the other bench, and starts up conversations with the other owners like, “What kind of dog is yours? How old is he? Where did you get him?” It’s hard not to smile while you’re at the dog run. It’s a pretty happy place and the happiness is infectious. I marvel at my son and how he, as an eight year old boy holds himself and interacts with adults. As the dogs start to get tired we collar Spike-ito up and walk him home. All the way home we talk about the experience, what we learned about Spike-ito (he’s a high energy dog, loves to run, is faster than the average dog, gets knocked over a lot but like the energizer bunny keeps on going, loves, loves, loves to play, and how much he needs a bath after all the slobbering from all the other dogs and the dirt and dust) and what we’d like to do when we get home.
• 8pm our pizza from Louie’s arrives. M-ito loves their pizza.
• 8:15-10pm we watch Diary of a Wimpy Kid, all three of us and sometimes four of us (Spike-ito included) seated across the couch, laughing. Ice cream included as dessert.
• 10pm Mom-ita takes Spike-ito out for his final walk and M-ito and I head to bed. We read for a few minutes then its lights out.
• 11pm Mom-ita joins us.

Follow-up to Poop, Pee, and Destruction

I told M-ito he couldn’t sing the Barney song anymore. We went to lay badmitton at the park and were resting in the sun after an hour of swatting birdies at each other, most of the time missing and laughing. No more stabbing, or cutting off heads, or crushing the purple dinosaur in song. He took it with a nod of his head. Okay.

Mom-ita added on the banning of the Monkey song – which went something like this: I had to pee. I couldn’t find a tree. So I peed on a monkey and the monkey cursed me. She said this in the car a few hours later. He argued it a little but gave in quickly. Mom-ita’s word is law.

My idea of just letting the two boys get this out of their systems in the first five minutes of the car ride just didn’t feel right. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But not in execution. You got to trust your gut. Some of their wordplay I do find funny (a problem in and of itself). I’m a sucker for toilet humor and slapstick. Still it doesn’t feel right to hear it come for 7 and 8 year olds. So much of a 7 year old’s world is about these kinds of things. Violent slapstick can be funny. Toilet humor always big for belly laughs. But when is it okay for them to repeat it or make it up themselves? My gut told me to stop it. Mom-ita took action way before I’d taken mine. That moment in the car brought me up to speed. No more monkey song. Now the decision is easy. In order to stay in line with what Mom-ita has decreed (No toilet humor or violence) I’ll just say no. I can’t wait to try this out this week when I drive M-ito to school. Gulp. Oh the trials of fatherhood.