Camp Colman 2013

Camp Colman 2013, a set on Flickr.

Pics from the weekend

Swingers

I thought I knew my son.  I thought I could predict how he would handle almost any situation - when he would dive in (rarely) and when he would sit back (often).

I was wrong.  He proved that this weekend.

Let me set the stage:  Finn and I joined Reid and one of his friends, as well as their dads, for a father son campout at a YMCA camp over on the peninsula Saturday night.  As a lifelong Boy Scout, let me just say, the YMCA camps are WAY nicer than Boy Scout camps.  Beyond the obvious - no basket weaving merit badge test to stress out over - their facilities were nicer, the food was better, and above all, instead of the aforementioned basket weaving and other fun activities such as leather working and Citizenship in the Community, Camp Colman had activities called Life & Death.  And Giant Swing.

We never checked out Life & Death, but Giant Swing is exactly what it sounds like.  A giant swing.  Attached to an enormous cedar tree deep in the woods and suspended on the same kind of cables that catch airplanes on aircraft carriers.

You need to sign up for Giant Swing at check in, so we signed up for the 6:15 pm session.  After a full day of running around like madmen, I was half expecting Finn and his buddies to bail on the giant swing after dinner, but everyone was talking it up and we were game, so we headed over.  The instructors spend the first ten minutes of your time there convincing you how safe Giant Swing is, which should tell you all you need to know about Giant Swing.   This is where it gets interesting.  When they asked who wanted to swing, Finn's hand was the first one in the air.  When they asked who wanted to go first, Finn's was the only hand still in the air.

I would not have predicted this.

In a semi-state of awe, I watched as they strapped him into a harness, put a helmet on his head and walked him down to the platform, from which they would raise him 30+ feet in the air.

Before you go any further, watch this video of the Camp Colman Giant Swing.  This is a must.

Now you see why I was so impressed.  Given that Finn doesn't even like to walk into Jena's house without me holding his hand, I was expecting him to bail when they told him I couldn't go down to the platform.  I was preparing my consolation hug for him, since he was sure to back out at that point when I realized that he was already down at the platform and climbing the ladder.  He never even looked at me, much less asked me to come down there.

I'm now starting to freak out a bit.  I ask them if I can go down closer to take some pictures.  But really I just wanted to be close enough that when I heard him tell the guide that he was too scared, I could rush right in and pick him up.  But he didn't say that.  The guide told him to jump back off the ladder to test his harness.  No way he would do that.  But he did it.  Then he said he was uncomfortable, so I breathed easy as order was restored to the universe and I prepared to get him.

Nope.  The guide adjusted his junk and Finn gave the thumbs up.  The ascent began.  Wow.

At roughly 20 feet, they asked Finn if he wanted to go any higher.  "HIGHER!" he yelled.  He yelled it again when they asked in another 5 feet.  At about 30 feet they made the mistake of asking again and up he went another 5 feet.  He went as high as they could crank him.  I almost threw up.

They gave the command to pull the rip cord, where he would unleash himself, and that was the moment I was sure he'd ask to be let down.  I was so sure that when he pulled the cord, dropped straight down ten feet and then shot about 50 feet over the forest, I forgot to take a picture.  I was trying too hard not to pee my pants.

After he had about two swings in, they told me I could grab a helmet and run down to take pictures at the bottom.  I quickly did so, certain that I'd hear him crying and begging to be let down as the swing slowed down.  Instead I heard this:

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  AGAIN!"

After we unbuckled him, and after I regained my composure, I gave him the biggest high-five my weak arms could muster.  As we climbed the hill back up to the group, the entire hill erupted in cheers of "FINN!  FINN!  FINN!"

It was amazing.  He was smiling ear to ear and begging to go again.  The grown-ups who had previously volunteered to go next, on the other hand, were looking a little queasy.  I couldn't blame them.  After promising him that we'd come back in the morning, he ran off to play with his friends.

It's worth noting that I never rode the swing.  I was lost after that performance.  Stunned.  And so it was that later, as the kids got even more tired and started in with the inevitable hitting & pushing, I was in a bit of quandary.

After all, who am I to yell at the maniac that conquered the Giant Swing while I stood idly by fretting with a dry mouth?

I'm that maniac's dad, that's who.  And I couldn't be prouder.

I Wish

One of the many fantastic things about having a friend like Jena to hang out with Finn is that in addition to being able to regularly pawn off the boy so that I can do important things like drink and watch baseball, she also represents one of the few channels through which we are able to extract any real information from him via the regular Q&A sessions through which she puts the kids.

Here's the latest, which she was nice enough to package for me as a ready-made blog post.

On the topic of things that he would wish for, Finn provided the following gems:

I would wish for sugar to not be bad for you. My mom wishes dairy was not bad for her so she could eat it, and sugar too. I wish for my dad that he was my teacher. And I wish my mom was my teacher. I wish we could fly. I'd fly to my house first and do nothing. Actually, I would fly to Key West. I wish my sister could crawl. I wish she could never cry again, like if she touched something she would stop crying... Like a water bottle cap. I wish Grandma Parker's area where she lives didn't have any hurricanes. I wish it would be snowing right now. I wish it would snow all year long. I wish I never got bloody. I wish Myla never called my sister "Itty" cause its not telling the truth. I wish my dad told the truth. He doesn't tell the truth that much. He said my elbow was my armpit. The last thing I wish for is a pet dolphin and a baby nurse shark.... They are not harmless. They don't harm anything.

Kitty thinks I should take that second-to-last comment as a sign that I should stop teasing and/or lying to him.  I think exactly the opposite is true.  I take great pride in the fact that my son can see through my BS.  

After all, he's going to need that skill if he's ever going to survive in this family.

Great Grandma Parker

Grandma and me, June 1973

Tomorrow is Finn's first day of kindergarten, and while that is bound to be an emotional day in the
Parker household, I'm going to defer getting into that so I can cover another emotional topic:  the passing of Finn & Edie's great-grandma Parker this weekend.

She picked an auspicious day to leave us - her 99th birthday.  I think she was embarrassed by the thought of Willard Scott reading her name on live TV and opted out a year early.

Meeting of the Edies, Summer 2013

Not surprising for someone who came from a time in which it was proper for an expectant couple to push the car out of the driveway on your way to the hospital before starting it so as not to raise a fuss with the neighbors with so indelicate a topic.

Alex, Finn & Grandma, Summer 2011

So here's to the Original Edie Parker, whose culinary mastery introduced the world to the now iconic dish of French Toast and Hotdogs (served mixed together in bite sized pieces) and who loved nothing more than to have her grandkids laying on the floor, watching the Boss Hogg show on TV (Boss being the real hero of Hazzard County on accounta sharing her maternal last name).

I hope that in Heaven, no one says that they hate anything - they merely "don't prefer it" - and that MTV is nowhere on the channel listings.

Rest in Peace, Grandma.

Gross

Baby led weaning?  Where's my baby led CLEANING?

Amiright?

For the record, avocado is best served squished up in a tiny hand and then thrown onto the kitchen floor.

Sigh.

Absent

Cucumbers are best savored

I'm currently away on my first business trip since Edie was born.  Hello from sunny San Diego.  If you're a crook watching my house, don't bother robbing us tonight.  Tango & Cash, the cats, will scratch the #$@% out of you before peeing on you and pooping in your shoes.  Seriously.

Now that that's settled...

One of the things that I realized as I was booking this trip was that the longest that either Kitty or I had previously been forced to single parent both of these children was 6-hours, which I did while Kitty was out drinking bon-bons and talking about corsets, or whatever it is that women do these days.  Of course, we made my mom watch our kids completely unattended for roughly 50+ hours, but that was for Phish.  So this was a big deal.

If there ever was a "right" time to run away, it is now, since we've decided to take a different approach with Edie than we took with Finn when it comes to feeding.  This time around, we're jumping on the "baby led weaning" bandwagon.  It's a thing.  Look it up.

So far, we've let Edie lead on cucumbers and salmon.  Turns out that baby-led-weaning actually means, baby-puts-food-in-mouth-then-throws-behind-seat/couch/table.

I have to admit that as a neat freak, this terrifies me.  I'm not sure I'm strong enough to let the baby lead the weaning.  Then again, the mess from making all of those artisinal baby purees that we made for Finn was pretty extensive.  Maybe it's a wash?  Until you get to blueberries.  Word on the street is that blueberries are the worst.  I'll just need to accept that for the next several months, it's going to be messy.

Hopefully in the end, this is going to result in a child that will eat more than just peanut butter & honey sandwiches and doesn't end every bite asking whether he's now eaten enough to have dessert.

I think I need to go ruminate over these things at a Padres game.  With beer.

Absentee parenting is hard.

Slacker

Remember when I said that I was going to build a fort for Finn? Boy, was that a dumb thing to say. Once I walked away from the graph paper mock-ups that we had created and actually thought about it, realizing that anything I would build would most likely collapse on his head and/or significantly decrease not just my own property value, but also the property values of the entire city of Seattle, I panicked. That's a lot of pressure.

To buy myself some time, I've been creating construction delays like a good little general contractor.  Initially it was going to be a treehouse, so I explained that I'd need to contact the city to discuss permitting for a treehouse in the city limits. Rather than call or stop by the permitting office, I really tried to screw myself by emailing them. I thought that would save me the rest of the summer, but the stupid over-performing city permit office got back to me immediately and said that a treehouse was fine.

Dang.

But then they mentioned that there were some trees that I couldn't build in and lo and behold, the tree in our backyard was one of them. Thank you, "Exceptional Tree" status!

This didn't dissuade Finn, however. Perhaps we shouldn't have had such a successful brainstorming session when planning his fort, because he decided he was fine if the fort was on the ground and only  wanted to know when his fort - complete with refrigerator, rocket launcher, fireplace and race car garage - was going to be completed. 

This has been a very quick, and likely expensive, lesson in child-expectation-management.

Fixing this the only way I know how, with money, I recommended that we head down to the Rainbow Playsets outlet and pick out an awesome playset with a slide, swings and a fine cedar finish that would weather the Seattle winter well and not require any additional maintenance that I'm unlikely to perform. Finn jumped at the opportunity, so I excitedly loaded the family in the car and headed down south to the land of the magical playsets. When we got there, the friendly gentleman instructed us that Finn could play on anything on the lot while he explained to me how many mortgages we would need to take out for just a basic sandbox. And I was fine with that. Finn immediately took off running, swinging & sliding.

After scoping out which ridiculously colorful monstrosity would fit in our yard, I hunkered down in one of the luxury-sedan-priced models with a little fort in the base to ask him which one he wanted most for home.

"I don't want any of these. I want the fort that we talked about."
"What?  Why? These are AWESOME! Check out the slides! Check out the swings! Our fort won't be able to have those things. Don't you want those things?  And it's even got this cool fort in the bottom!"
"No. I want my refrigerator. This fort is too small for my refrigerator."

Double dang.

I'm pretty sure Zillow is going to devalue my house just based on this blog post, but it looks like we're building a fort. If anyone has a line on a good fort refrigerator, let me know. Looks like I'm in the market.