Scene: Nate’s bedroom. Nate is playing with his cars. Dad is unsuccessfully trying to get Nate to put his pajamas on.

Nate: Hey daddy, do you know what (unintelligible) is?

Dad: Um, what? Do I know what what is?

Nate: (unintelligible)! Do you know what (unintelligible) is?

Dad: Did you say Hannah Montana? Do I know what Hannah Montana is?

Nate: No! Not Hannah Montana! I’ll just tell you. It’s pink.

Dad: What’s pink?

Nate: (unintelligible)!

Dad: Okay, it’s pink. But what is it?

Nate (shouting): It’s pink!

Dad begins to laugh uncontrollably.

Nate: Oh, wait a minute, I forgot. It’s not pink.

I finally figured out that he was saying (or trying to say) anaranjado, which is (apparently) the Spanish word for the color orange. Ah well, I expect his pronunciation is better than mine is.

The N Word

Nate has been really into saying “no” the past couple of months. If I ask him to do something, he can’t help but violently oppose it, no matter how much he might actually want to do it. This is frustrating to both of us, although I must admit to taking a perverse delight in occasionally interrupting a tantrum to tell him that I think he should have dessert. The horrified look in his eyes as he hears himself screaming NOOO is simply delicious.

The parenting books call it “asserting one’s individuality,” but I have my own private (and less socially acceptable) name for it. A perfectly normal stage of development, but we’ve been screaming at each other a bit more than I would like, these days.

The Supercuts of Dorian Gray

Nate spent the other night at Jennifer’s house, so I could go out with some friends after work. On my way home, I stopped to get my hair cut. I sat in the chair, and the stylist put a neck strip and cutting cape on me, to keep the trimmings out of my clothes. This particular cutting cape was brown: an important detail, as we shall see.

Snip snip, buzz buzz, and then she asked me to look down, so she could work on the back of my neck. I looked down and recoiled in horror; the trimmings in my lap were pure white. I remembered seeing brown hair in the mirror when I combed it that morning. Clearly, all my hair had turned white during the day, and no one had told me. I kept my head angled down, because I didn’t really want any scalp lacerations, but I peered up at the mirror to see my newly white hair.

The neck strip was pretty tight, and with my head bent down, I saw that I had an enormous double chin. Good grief, white hair and heavily overweight? I suddenly looked 20 years older. Or ten years older, if I don’t lay off the Oreos.

When she was done cutting, I lifted my head up, and my appearance was back to normal. It took me another day or so to figure out that the lapful of white hair was due to the fact that I couldn’t see my brown hair against the brown cutting cape.

Back In Time

When I was a kid, my mom gave me the classic mother’s curse: “I hope you have a kid just like you.” I took her seriously. I didn’t think I’d ever want to have kids, but I realized that I might, and with that realization came another, more sobering one: I would be an adult someday. I vowed to myself that I would never, ever forget what it was like to be a kid.

On my way home from my foray into the future at Supercuts, it all came slamming back. I’ve forgotten a lot, but I suddenly remembered, with perfect clarity, the searing frustration of being a small child. I felt as if I had absolutely no control over anything.

Now that I’m a parent, my childhood memories are valuable intel: an insight into the mind of my own child. Control is like crack to a little kid. And the easiest way for Nate to exert control over a situation is to say no. He knows I can’t force him to eat, or use the toilet, or go to sleep. And the more I want him to do something, the more he enjoys saying no.

The answer hit me like a ton of bricks: Let the Wookiee win. It won’t hurt him to skip a meal, or stay up late once in a while.

It worked like a charm. The hourly fights have tapered off to the occasional tantrum every few days. He was confused at first. He asked how much dinner he would have to eat in order to earn dessert, and I told him, “Just eat as much as you want.” Now, we decide before dinner whether or not there will be dessert, purely on my whim. We average dessert two nights a week. He can skip dinner and go straight to dessert if he wants, but he knows from bitter experience that when the meal is over, it’s over, and if he is still hungry at bedtime, I will laugh at him.

No more begging him to eat one more grape. No more screaming at meal time. And damn if he isn’t eating a pretty healthy dinner most nights.

I know this is a touchy topic, so I want to be clear: this is not meant to be advice. I don’t know your kid. I am blessed with a child who eats a lot of different things, some of them good for him. If you are having problems getting your kid to eat, you have my sympathy. That is not one of our problems. He just has a wicked sweet tooth, and he enjoys saying no to me.

I guess “pick your battles” is a pretty basic parenting lesson. It’s taken me a while to learn it, but by golly, it’s working.

It seems like just yesterday that we helped Sarah’s parents strip everything off their boat in preparation for the end of summer last year. The pictures are still on my digital camera. The S2 logo is usually covered with canvas. She looks so naked without her dodger. We put the boathooks in the sail locker and stowed all the cushions in the attic.

Nate helped, of course. Mostly he helped eat all the grapes, but he was quite efficient. And he climbed up and down the companionway. I hovered over him, nervously. He had just turned three, and he was pretty surefooted, for three. But that’s not terribly surefooted, from an adult perspective—especially around the water.

From the minute he could walk, he loved to run. I would always chase after him, yelling “run on the grass, please!” because I knew it would hurt less when he took the inevitable header. Of course he had his share of skinned knees and bumped noses, but he never let it slow him down.

Blink, and you’ll miss it. Fall, winter, spring, nine months gone, just like that. Now he’s almost four; the snow is forgotten, we have to wear sunscreen again, and the boat is back in the water. We were headed down to the boatyard over Memorial Day weekend to load her up. I went to the House of Grous to pick Nate up from his sleepover. He burst out of the front door and fairly flew across the lawn, laughing with joy. Not one false step. I had to stop and think: when did this happen? When did he stop being a toddler? When was the first time he was able to open the car door by himself? When did I stop having to hold his hand on the stairs? When did he learn to zip his own jacket, to button a button, to pour milk on his cereal?

We got to the boat, and true to form, he had to go up and down the companionway a hundred times. I swear he’s part cat; when he’s in, he wants to be out, and when he’s out, he wants to be in. But this is a steep ladder, and he makes it look easy. He can do it by himself. Naturally, he thinks he can do everything by himself. But in this case, he really can do it by himself.

This time, he ate all the watermelon. He’s a good helper.

When he was ten weeks old, we took him to Salt Marsh Pottery to have his handprints and footprints cast in ceramic (and decorated with impressions of a starfish, a scallop shell, and a seahorse). It’s hanging on an earthquake-proof Ook in the hallway. Sarah said that in the event of a fire, assuming we could all get out safely, she would want to save the wedding album and the baby print tile.

Every so often, I’ll hold him up so we can see how much bigger his hands are now. It’s hard to believe he was ever that small.

Last night he lay down in the bathtub and stretched out. For the first time, his toes touched at one end and his fingers touched at the other end. He’s growing, right before my eyes. I can almost see him getting taller.