Summer Nights

A. will be three in exactly a week. The "terrible twos" weren't all that terrible, but now that he's almost three, everything's a negotiation. He wanted to take a nice little walk around the block after dinner. Or, rather, he'd "ride" his bike and I'd walk with Ben in the sling. I put "ride" in quotation marks because he refuses to use the pedals and prefers the Flintstone method. Such a lovely walk in the summer evening after dinner while the light lingers and the heat is still rising from the pavement...

When he started "riding" his bike earlier this summer, a walk around the block would take over an hour. He was sloooow. We'd have to start out right after dinner in order to make it home before dark.

But now he's pretty fast on his bike, even with the Flintstone method. I believe he could probably win any race where everyone has to use their feet instead of the pedals. I thought, hey, this could be good exercise and it will certainly be a quicker stroll around the block. Well, we arrived home a good hour and half later because we

1. had to stop at every driveway. He got off his bike, walked up to the garage of the house, said, "watch this, Mama!" and ran down the driveway yelling "wheeee!" It would have been significantly more impressive if the driveways in our neighborhood weren't about 5 feet long and perfectly flat;

2. had to stop and stare at many things, including anyone watering their lawn, the guys down the street beating something into submission with a baseball bat (we didn't get close enough to see what it was) and various rocks. We also had to think long and hard at each corner about which way to go, even though we were going around the block;

3. had to stop and chase random kitties. I explained that the kitties were scared and that's why they were running away and maybe it would be better if we didn't scare them. "But I'm not scary, Mama! I'm friendly!" We also had to stop and listen for a long time if we heard a dog behind a fence.

4. And then there was the dog who made me age about 20 years by running up behind us, off his leash, and barking at us. The big, black dog. Who was probably a lab or something but could have been a rottweiler for all I knew and his teenage handler was WAY TOO SLOW running behind him. Oh Sweet Jesus he scared the crap out of me. I had a quick vision of grabbing A. off his bike and running home with Ben hanging around my neck and A. dangling down and the dog mauling my legs. A. said, "Oh, that's a dog. That's a dog right there," and continued down the road.

Evening is not the best time to have these walks. My patience is usually thin, and I'm not the same mom who made a game out of picking up the Legos this morning. Finally I growled, "OK, buddy, we need to pick up the pace. Ben is getting heavy, and I need to put him down. But I can't put him down in the middle of the sidewalk, and we need to get home. C'mmooooooon, let's go. This way. C'mon, faster, faster." You can imagine how well that worked.

So we got home, got him into the bathtub, managed the meltdown when he realized his special teddy bear soap was dissolving in the water as soap will do, put him in jammies, read something about Thomas, and put him in his crib. That was an hour and a half ago and he's still awake. I want to skip to 4 years old.