End of an Era

Halloween 2008

Today marks the end of a period in our family life.  Teddy goes to kindergarten next week, and today was our last weekday together.  Family life will go on and will probably improve in some ways, but I can't help but stop and reflect today.  Teddy and I have been the Wednesday/Friday home team for nearly three years.  It can be hard to access the memory of just what he was like when I first started working part-time.  Since I went part time in November 2008, the Halloween picture at right captures the moment.  (Private note to blogger.com: thanks for finally making it easy to caption photos!)

That Halloween, Teddy, dressed as a monkey, went from door to door eschewing "Trick or Treat" for his own preferred greeting:  "MONTEY TOSTUME!"  My weekday buddy was a highly dependent two-year-old at the time.  Changing diapers occupied some of our early weekday time together.  I could depend on a long nap in the afternoon.  I still had to chew his food and spit it into his mouth like a little bird (ok, maybe not that).  While I can list those facts, it's difficult to wind the mental tape back and remember what it was like to spend my days with him then.  If I were a good blogger, I would have gone back and read early posts and synthesized a conclusion.  Maybe next year.

 
Teddy definitely has learned to do a lot more for himself and to help out around the house.  He now sets and clears the table every night.  He just got his first allowance.  As the video at right demonstrates, he's not ready to enroll at Oxford or anything; he's still a little kid.  He's just a much bigger little kid than when I first started spending gobs of time alone with him.  The video also demonstrates that I just got a new smartphone that I don't really know how to operate.  Finally, it demonstrates that on our last Dad-and-Lad day, I got soft and actually put quarters in the chintzy ride outside KMart.  This way, he can't say we never did anything fun on our weekdays together.  

In a lot of ways, today turned out like many of the preceding weekdays together.  We went to the dry cleaner and K Mart and Giant Eagle (cookie card cookie + race car cart =  happy boy).  We also managed to get to the pool and hang out with one of Teddy's friends.  Top that, kindergarten!