Cabin Fever

The moose came by to visit on Tuesday. I had seen footprints once before coming down our hill and disappearing back up the hill, and was suspicious that they belonged to some neighborhood voyeur who watched Marin, Matteo and me eat supper one night.

Now, with a two-ton moose lurching down that same hill, same path, I realized that the mystery was solved. I took some pictures, and then kept him in my purview as he ate his way through the willows on the perimeter of our property.

Teo pulled down a big old common cold on Thursday, and it forestalled another swimming debacle on Friday. Instead, we bedded down on the sofa and watched “Peep” videos. Marin got wind of Peep through some colleague, they’re really simple, animated cartoons about sciency stuff like melting water, changing seasons, how wind blows, and how birds fly. It’s voiced by kids, and the animation is refreshingly simple. Our “source” is a storefront in the Seattle Airport.

We built forts using cardboard blocks that Teo got for Christmas.

We also did some filming. On Thursday it was of Matteo and me playing balls-down-the-steps, which is this game where he corrals and carefully shepherds about a dozen tennis and handball balls to the edge of the stairs, and then he goes crazy, and all the balls are careening down at me below. He gets so excited he follows them with demonic laughter, chasing down the ones which evade my grasp, bounding first down the hall and then back into the bedroom.

The thing is, he is learning to catch balls, and it’s so fun to watch. So I set up the camera on a tripod, right in the falling ball zone, and switched it on for five minutes of mayhem. It was all I could do to keep Teo from coming down and insisting on seeing himself every time he did something or other.

Later in the day, when we moved from singing his songs (he won’t let me sing his songs, really. They’re his songs.) to singing my songs, he started break-dancing on the sofa, which I had to set the video camera up to capture. He was throwing himself from one end to the other, flinging his arms, tumbling head over heels. All to the inspiration of “The Times They Are A Changing.”

As he got sicker, on Friday, he was camped out on my lap as I sang through his Pooh book of common nursery rhymes. I love when he lets me be the Papa, and curls up in my lap. Had to video that. So we paged through, singing. Now and then he’d sing with me, which was fun to see and hear, in the playback.

However, this morning (Sunday), when Marin fell back asleep (after another so-so 8-months-pregnant sleepless ngiht), I got out a puzzle to put together with Matteo, he called it a “video” puzzle. Huh? Then I remembered, two or three weeks ago, I set up the camera to see how it would work videoing an activity. It was in fact this puzzle. No wonder you can’t use profane language around kids. Their brains still work.

Wading In / Advent Day 17

Advent is for waiters. And for waders.

Teo used to be a swimmer, buoyed by his styrofoam butt-pack. We went three times a week last winter, and even took "lessons" in the spring. Early last year, he’d take off across the pool hanging off a foam noodle, and later in the season I convinced him to give up the noodle, and he’d stay up using his arms and feet (and but-pack). He’d head off across the pool while I would be talking to my friend Laurent. No longer.

I’ve gone four times this winter so far. The first time, Teo held on so tight I could barely breathe. The second time we brought a friend Cooper along, and I played with Cooper some while Matteo clung to the side of the pool. The third time I eventually peeled him off me and set him up on his floaty noodle. His subsequent howly tantrum scared everyone. Margie, the no-nonsense but congenial woman who’s taught all of Fairbanks to swim when they were Teo’s age, marched in from her front office, and reprimanded me...

As did my wife. Marin, who rolls her eyes every time I compare Teo to other children (as in, "the other kids trust their parents and play together in the pool, and laugh together, and have fun..."), said simply, "Maybe he needs someone else to teach him to swim."

So, yesterday I resolved to desire nothing. Simply to show up with Matteo and keep us mostly submerged for the 45 minutes so we wouldn’t get cold.

Clinging was the order of the day. Matteo’s little arms clenched around my neck, and my arms gathered him in as I ambled in from 3 feet – the shallow end – to neck deep. Like a ccockroach, Matteo kept climbing higher on the sinking flotsam which was Papa.

Whenever I removed a hand from him, his alarm would go off. "No, HOLD me," he’d insist, right in my ear. Remembering his ability to bring the law down on me, I didn’t disobey. So we were pretty much cheek to cheek, banging noses whenever one of us turned his head. Dare I mention the parents who were pulling their 18-month-olds on the other end of snaky noodles, laughing, splashing; or the other Papa whose son was jumping into the water from the deck, into his arms...

I opened the door into the little intimacy Teo was creating with me, against the rest of the world. I started singing "O Tannenbaum," while bobbing and turning a little. We became ballroom dancers. When I’d get a little too emphatic in rhythmic ducking or spinning, he’d fire off his stern "No, Papa!" We danced through "Away in a Manger," with several questions posed ("what’s ‘cattle are lowing,’ Papa," or "what’s ‘stay by my cradle?’"). One hand came off him during "Silent Night," and two came off, with him standing on my thighs in full cling during "Jingle Bells." By then he was actually having fun, shouting out "Hey" at the appropriate time in the song, and even splashing a little without panicking.

The time went quickly, which is sometimes all that a parent can ask.

Half a parent-week later (conversion factor: one stay-at-home-parent hour = a day / one SAHP day = a week), when we were lighting candles in the dark at suppertime and giving thanks for things, Matteo lit his candle and said, "for Papa and Matteo singing in the pool."

Worth wading for.