Happy Birthday, Adam!

My son Adam turned two years old today. We celebrated this momentous occasion - the onset of the "terrible twos" - with a party featuring his best friend, his cousins, an ice cream cake, a thousand percussive devices, and, of course, a giant plush Nemo.

I'm too beat from the birthday festivities to write much right now, so enjoy the pictures:



While Adam has long loved anything with a ball (ball sports sometimes create some real linguistic hillarities: since you play tennis with a tennis ball and golf with a golf ball, Adam has decided that you must play baseball with a "baseball ball", football with a "football ball", basketball with a "basketball ball", etc.) his most enduring passion so far has been music. Here he is, playing with the snare drum that he made himself by sticking loose change into a plastic tub, while listening to Miles Davis and looking at one of my Jazz encyclopedias. He loves playing any drum, but his favorite instrument to listen to is either the saxophone or the clarinet. He knows that Jeff Coffin plays both of those with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and he knows that Mama plays the clarinet. His favorite sax players are Paul Desmond and John Coltrane, but his favorite drummer is Chappy! I wonder where he got his good taste!



Here he is just before bed one night last week, wearing his Thomas the Train pajamas (it's been so much easier to get him to bed since we've been able to say, "Hey Adam, why don't you put on you train pajamas?!?") and my running shoes, playing with my tennis racket. He just loves trying to fill my size 13 shoes. Hopefully that isn't a theme for the rest of his life.



Here he is, playing in his room at the birthday party, with a friend and his cousins. Our neighbor, the friend's mom, looked in and said, "That looks like the makings of a great garage band!"



Here's a chocolate lipped Adam blowing out the candles on his cake (both of them!) with Daddy "helping" slightly. For the record, Sami got the cake from Graeter's Ice Cream: Black Raspberry Chip ice cream, with chocolate cake and a fudge center. There's still some in the freezer if you want any. But you'd better hurry, before I eat it all myself.



Of course, the best part of a birthday party is the presents! Here are Adam and his cousin Caleb tearing into one of the many gifts - a Thomas the Train set.



Growing a year older is so exhausting. Here's Adam crashing on the couch with Daddy and three balloons (perhaps the highlight of the party - I may never be rid of them!), plus his Christmas present "Big Elmo" (one of two Elmos he got this year) and his birthday present, a giant, plush Nemo. I think we're trying to watch Wallace and Gromit, but as you can see from my glazed-over expression, I may be wrong. Mostly I was watching the back of my eyelids.

Special thanks to Sami, who took so many pictures that she forgot to be a part of any of them. Or, maybe that was her plan all along...

An Early Morning Conversation

On Friday Adam went to Lexington to stay with my parents, his “Ma” and “Pops,” so that Sami and I could for once pretend to be adults. We had so much fun eating dinner at a Mongolian grill that we forgot to go to a movie. Who knew that, after over five years of marriage, all we really needed to do was talk to each other?

When Adam stays with Ma and Pops, however, he comes back changed, his routine altered, his natural rhythm off. So he got up early this morning, and joined us in our bed.

“Adam, is it light outside, or dark outside?”

Dark outside! Dark outside!

“So, does that mean that it is daytime, or nighttime?”

Night!

“And what do we do at night?”

Sleep! We sleep!

“So what are we going to do right now?”

Play tennis outside?!?

A boy can hope, can’t he?

An Early Morning Adamism

Fall crept up on us, taking us by surprise last night. While it hadn't felt like summer in a few weeks, we were still basking in the 72 and sunny that I played tennis in on Tuesday, and didn't bother to check the weather before we went to bed last night. Consequently, no heat. Just before dawn I heard Adam whimpering in his room across the hall. He'd escaped from the fierce clutches of his blanket, only to find that there is something worse than the tyranny of restricted movement.

I picked him up and carried him into our bedroom to warm up. He huddled with us under the blankets for a while. Then, after he'd had all the snuggles he could stand, he got up and started running around on top of the bed. Finally finished stomping our sleepy limbs - there is a cost to bringing a boy into your bed! - he stopped and looked out the window, just as the sun was rising over the trees in our front yard.

He started jumping up and down, pointing, gesticulating wildly, and shrieking the exuberant shriek of youth. Slow down, Adam. What is it? He gathered himself, took a deep breath, and said, clearly,

Outside... sun... LIGHTS ON!

What a way to describe the sunrise!

Telling Adam Stories

This blog used to be full of stories about my son, Adam, now almost twenty months old. But lately I've been caught up in "serious" stuff, forgetting the wisdom of youth which says that the purpose of life is simply to live. While I don't want to idealize them too much, children have a kind of spiritual genius which we could all stand to learn from.

My son, for instance, still makes no firm distinction between work and play. Every morning, after I change his "morning diaper" - the sticky, soggy, saturated blob still stuck to his butt from the night before - he insists on cleaning everything up. He picks up the changing pad and the wipes container, putting them back where they go. Then he grabs his late, great diaper, lifts it over his head and proudly, almost gleefully, declares "Trash!" Then he trots out to the kitchen, opens up the cabinet where the trash can for diapers is kept safe from the reach of curious household pets (who would gladly scatter the remnants of a former diaper all over the house if only the could get the paws on one), and plops it into the can. "All done!"

"All done" is his new favorite phrase. It is a useful little gem of a statement, made all the more useful by the flexible meanings he ascribes to it. It could mean that he is finished eating his morning oatmeal. It could mean that his cup is empty. It could mean that he has just done something that we should all marvel at. Or it could be an expression of wishful thinking, hoping against hope that if he proclaims an unwanted activity finished, then, by God, the activity must be finished.

Half an hour into the forty-five minute trip to Oldham County to visit Sami's mother, Adam's beloved "MeMe" (so named in part as a joke that stuck - every time she left a message on our answering machine my mother-in-law would begin, "Yeah, it's me," so we threatened to change her name to "Me") he grabs the strap on his car seat - we call it his "seat belt" so he can associate it with our seat belts and realize that if Mama has to wear a seat belt and Daddy has to wear a seat belt then Adam had better wear a seat belt, too - and declare this torturous trip "All done!"

His language is exploding. That may be the biggest change since the last time I've written about him. Whereas he once had only a few disconnected words, now he speaks in little sentences. Every morning, as he readies himself for preschool, he says, almost rote, "Bye-bye, Daddy! I love you, Daddy!" Of course, his "I love you" is more like "Iwufoo," sounds all jumbled together, unable to slip past his still developing tongue. But I know what he means.

His language is often context-dependant. That is, he is almost constantly speaking, but if you don't know what he's looking at or responding to, you may never know what it is that he's saying. For the longest time I thought it was gibberish, but it is starting to become more clear. You can see patterns in the sounds even when he doesn't exactly know the word he's looking for.

To understand him, you also have to understand that sometimes he simply gives up on words. Realizing that he can't get the whole thing out, he'll pick a sound for a particular word, go with it, and hope that you can figure it out. For instance, "Ahhh!," if it is accompanied by the roar of an airplane overhead and his little finger pointing at the sky, is "airplane." If that same sound is accompanied by him puffing his cheeks out and blowing furiously trying triumphantly to imitate the trumpeting of an elephant, is, of course, "elephant."

But he doesn't always pick his closest approximation of the opening sound in a word or phrase. For complex words he generally goes for the most familiar sound, no matter where it appears in the word. This morning, for instance, we were wrestling on the bed, part of our Friday morning routine. He goes to preschool Monday through Thursday. When we signed him up we expected that by now I would either be working, in law school, or both. But I still don't have a job, and law school was a terrible idea for me. Since his preschool is in the same building where his mother works, and since we are getting a good discount for that, we decided top let him start preschool anyway, giving me time to work on my writing while also, hopefully, getting a part time job and working toward getting back in school (you should already know that story. While I pick him up from his preschool at noon four days a week, giving us some time alone together those day, Friday is our day. Just the two of us, like it used to be.

So, on Friday mornings, we wrestle on Daddy's bed, a treat for the both of us. Today during our match, he learned a new word: BOOM! I'd pick him up and slam him down on the mattress, yelling "Boom!" I'd jump onto the bed next to him, mimicking an elbow drop. BOOM! Then he started saying "boom." He'd jump up an down on my chest after "knocking me down" (I wonder if he thinks he did that with his own strength, like he can really take me down if he needs to), yelling Boom! BOOM!

Every moment is a teaching moment, so I decided to teach him something he won't learn for a few more years. I said, "Adam, did you know that 'boom' is an example of onomatopoeia?" He responded by proudly declaring "Pea! Pea!," like, "I get it, Daddy! See, I can say it, too!"

But what I love most about him is that, for him, everything is play, everything is - at least potentially - a game. It is a dark, damp, ugly morning. Rain has set in, keeping us from going to the park, swinging at the playground, or taking the dog for a walk, a few of our favorite Friday things. He spent much of the morning begging to go outside, so I told him that it was raining, and we can't go outside in the rain. Adam, in response, opened up the front door revealing the glass storm door that he looks out through to see the wider world, as if to try to prove that it wasn't really raining, like hope is a strategy for changing the fundamental nature of the universe. Seeing that it was, in fact, raining, just like Daddy said it was, he paused for a moment, downtrodden.

Then he simply shut the front door behind him, leaving him standing in the space between the front door and the storm door. In mock surprise I playfully teased, "Where's Adam?" Giggles come from behind the door. "Is he under the couch?" More giggles. "Is he in the bathroom?" Still more giggles. "Is he... behind the door?" *Gasp* A little voice from behind the door, emphatically, "NO!" I walked to the door, slowly opened it, and said "I see ADAM!," at which point he erupted into a fit of giggles.

But now I hear him calling out to me, "ALL DONE!," letting me know that his benevolent patience has about run out. Daddy simply must be done pecking at that silly keyboard.

Sacred Space

It is no secret that my now 16 month old son Adam has an obsession with a silly little game called basketball which is, here in Kentucky, the closest thing we have to a tribal religion. I have written on this before.

Across the street from our house is a park with not one but two full court basketball courts. Every day he and I make our hajj, our pilgrimage, across the street to watch the spontaneous games on these courts. But never is he allowed to cross the white line which divides the spectators from the participants. Never is he allowed to cross the line dividing the laity from the clergy. He can only watch as the local priests of his religion celebrate their daily mass, offering up their humble prayers to the gods of hoop.

This past week it has been hot. Oppressively hot. So hot that it isn't exactly safe to take him on his daily (sometimes hourly) trip to the park in the middle of the day. He have to pick our spots, choose our moments carefully, avoiding the afternoon son which turns our fair skin into the scorched color of a boiled lobster. So, this morning, before the thermostat cranked its way up again, we took an early trip to the park, before anyone else was up and out.

We dropped by the playground, visiting his favorite swings and slides. He crawled under his favorite play structures, hiding in their shade from the rising sun, milking his time outdoors. We played our version of tag, with me yelling in a playful, taunting, sing-song voice, "I'm going to get you!" after which he always giggles and scurries as fast as his short, stocky legs will carry him. I catch him and swing him in the air, just like I always do when he decides to let me catch him.

After our play was done, even though the ballers haven't climbed out of their beds yet, we walked down to the basketball courts, our basketball courts. There was no game of hoop to watch, no religious ceremony to observe. Only the quiet, lonely sanctuary of the empty courts. As usual, Adam walked up to the painted white line that marks the barrier of one of the courts, the great divide between those who can ball and those who can't. Adam can't ball because he is, of course, still far too small. I can't ball, or at least I usually don't, because of a bum knee. Every now and then I play, schooling the hyper-athletic teenagers whose games, alas, are not as mature as their bodies. But most of the time I only watch, knowing that if I dare to play I might finally really need that surgery I've been putting off for almost a year.

But this morning the courts were empty. No one to trample Adam. No one to tempt me to push harder than I should - the competitive fires burn perpetually in those who have been seduced by the game - only to wind up once again on a surgeon's table. So we stood, like we always do, just outside the white lines, staring at the great divide. And with no one on the other side, we crossed over, onto the court.

The look on Adam's face as we passed through the barrier he's never been allowed to cross was one I'll treasure forever. He was like a new high priest of ancient Israel, passing through the curtain into the Holy of Holies for the first time. He stared up and the goal in awe, then ran up to it and put his arms around it, clinging to it in the sweet and desperate embrace of a forbidden love. He had arrived. He was on the court. And, at this moment, there was no one who could beat him.

I let him hold the goal for a little while, before I called him out to the free throw line to try to teach him a thing or two. That's how much of a sentimental fool I am. He's 16 months old, and I'm trying to teach him how to move on the court. Sucking the spontaneous fun out of his game? He ran around for a little bit, like a good child not listening to a single word his father said, so mesmorized was he by his sacred space.

Perhaps I'm projecting my own guilty idolatry onto him. My father is, among many other things, a baseball coach. For years I honestly believed that I loved baseball, so powerful was and is his love for that game. But the look of awe on my son's face seems sincere. His love for hoop starts early and runs deep. If it is as deep as it seems, then he will grow up in at least one of his father's many religions.

The Next Pistol Pete?

There are a number of legendary stories about basketball great Pete Marovich's childhood. His father was a basketball coach, and it is said that the young Pistol was never separated from a basketball. On a recent CBS special one of his former classmates said that on their rides to school Pete would hang out the window of a moving car, dribbling the ball down the street. Other old friends recalled him dribbling the ball all the way to the movie theater every weekend. Once inside, we would sit in an aisle seat, and dribble the ball throughout the movie. He would start off one side of the theater, then half-way through the movie he would move to the other side of the theater so he could practice with his other hand. And, of course, vice versa.

My son Adam has long shared his father's obsession with Kentucky's real religion, basketball. He already owns four different basketballs, and prefers each ball for different activities. He and his basketballs are nigh inseparable.

We often go to the park across the street from our house to play on the playground. But at that park there are also two full basketball courts, which often sport pick-up games for a variety of skill levels. I've been known to sneak out of the house from time to time to teach the kids from the nearby Catholic high school a thing or two.

Every time we go to the park to play, Adam insists on stopping by the basketball courts on the way home. If no one is playing a game, he'll trot out to the free throw line, bounce his imaginary ball, and then fling it toward the hoop. If there are people playing, he watches in awe before mustering up the courage to try to charge the court and take them all on.

Today was a dreary, dark, damp, rainy day. Adam spent most of the day by the window, looking out, pointing longingly to the nearby park, begging to go out. I continually said, "Adam, it's raining today. We can't go outside when it rains." He didn't much care for that. We had to find something to do.

The other day we went to Target. My wife Sami, upon seeing the perfect treat for her little one, creatively manipulated our budget (as breadwinner she is the queen of the budget) to include a Little Tikes Easy Score Basketball set; Adam's very own basketball goal! Since then it has been sitting in the back of our mini van, waiting for the mechanically hapless Daddy to summon the courage to assemble it.

Turns out courage is easy to summon with the proper motivation. The prospect of Adam spending the rest of our already mostly wasted day staring out a window pleading with the clouds to stop dumping rain on his beloved park was enough to motivate me to get off my ass and, the prospect of disillusioning my child who thinks me a demi-god be damned, try to assemble the goal still sitting uselessly in the van.

It was, it turns out, easy. Really, anybody could do it. Took me five minutes, at the most. (Though that could be because Sami helped!) Adam spent almost the entire evening dunking his favorite basketballs through his very own brand new hoop. He was in toddler heaven.

Tonight it was more difficult than usual to put him to bed. He was clearly tired, but he finally had something worth staying up for. To go to sleep would be to finally surrender his never ending game of hoop. We finally coaxed him into the crib by letting him hold on to his favorite ball, with the promise that at first light the game begins anew.