Sins of the Father (HoL 11)

I finally got the boy to sleep tonight. We spent all day unpacking from our trip to Florida and napping while watching the Carolina Panthers whoop up on the New Orleans Saints. All three of us are a little bit sick. Nancy has a migraine and a stuffy nose. I have a bit of a sinus problem, and the boy is stuffy and was not in the mood to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day and I think Nancy is a little tense as well. Tomorrow, we drop him off for the first time for a few hours at his daycare center “Little Mouse Playhouse”.

We picked this place for a few reasons. It was recommended by our friends, the Boatmans, who have three very smart, outgoing, clever, funny kids who all went there. Secondly, “Little Mouse” is right down the street from us. When I first went in to visit, I got a feeling of organized chaos about the place. There are toys everywhere, but I bet that each one has it’s specific place. There is structure and lesson plans, but everything could be put on hold if a snake wandered on to the playground, and the class could go and look at it and learn about reptiles. Nancy and I both feel like it is the best choice we could make.

All three of us are exhausted from our long journey home from Florida yesterday. Grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, all made sure that the boy had enough toys. Our car looked like we had robbed a “Toy’s R Us”. Nancy had a very small area to sit in, and had to hold two bags on her lap during the ride home. It was also really rainy for about four and a half hours of travel time. It was a long ride, but we had a great week.

We started off in Gainesville. I got to spend some of Saturday morning looking at old pictures with my grandmother “Mimi” at her apartment. I hadn’t sat with just the two of us in a very long time and it was wonderful. She reminded me of things from my childhood that I had forgotten about, and told me stories about her sister Helene and brother Paul, which one day I will pass on to Isaac.

Isaac opened his presents from my folks on Sunday, and he got a very cool kick activated “Ferris Wheel”. Isaac’s friend Hannah has one, and he loved it when we visited her last time. Our nieces, Cassidy and Faith, thought it was a very cool toy and spent a good deal of time putting the balls on the Ferris wheel and watching them roll down the slides activating spinners. We also got to spend some time with one of my oldest friends, Danny, and his wife Tracy. They are expecting a little girl any day now, and it was great to share in their anticipation and wonder. I even made Danny do a practice bottle feeding with Isaac.

Nancy’s parents, Cassidy and Faith, and the three of us went to one of my favorite places growing up, Silver Springs, in Ocala on Monday. It’s a Nature park, where they have country music shows in the summer, and they used to film all the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. The signature attraction is the Glass Bottom boats that travel over crystal clear water to view the fish, and springs. I pointed at one of the caves and told Cassidy that I think I saw the little mermaid in there. Boy I love kids. From that point on, we had to stare intently into every cave looking for a big fin or red hair. Isaac got to ride on his first thrill ride there too. They have a “Lighthouse ride” that takes you way up into the sky in little gondolas to observe the river. Isaac did much better than my mother-in-law. Isaac also rode a very cool carousel that day.

We drove down to Orlando that night, and crashed at my Uncle Johnny’s place. It was great to have a place of our own for the night, and we all got a good nights rest, although Nancy was ready to go and kill the neighbor’s rooster the next morning.

Tuesday, we packed the car and drove over to Dismal world. My brother-in-law’s niece got us into Epcot and the Studios for the day. This was definitely the way to “Do” Disney with a baby. There was hardly anyone there. There were no lines, and since Nancy and I used to go to Disney all the time, we got to pick and choose what we wanted to see. We took pictures of Isaac and I being stepped on by an AT-AT over at “Star Tours”. We got another picture of him sitting in a big crate full of snakes over at “Indiana Jones”. My favorite picture is of the three of us sitting on the sign in front of the “Tower of Terror”. I have about a half a dozen pictures of Nancy and I sitting on that sign from previous trips, and it felt good to add him into our weird family ritual.

At Epcot, Isaac was fascinated with all of the audio animatronics on “Spaceship Earth”, and Nancy and I stuffed ourselves at “The Garden Grill”, while a very bored Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale spent a lot of time taking pictures with Isaac in the nearly empty restaurant.

I think my favorite story from the week happened near the end of the day at Epcot. The three of us were tired, and Isaac was starting to get a little cranky. We wandered into the “Japan” pavilion and found a little Zen garden with a koi pond and a waterfall. I stood Isaac up on the edge of the pond to watch the waterfall which fascinated him and seemed to calm him down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little boy, maybe six or seven years old watching the two of us. I pretended not to notice him and leaned in close to Isaac and said out loud, “Okay Isaac, at the count of three, I’m going to drop you into the fountain, and I want you to swim down to the bottom like you did last time and pick up all the quarters and bring them back to me. One……Two…..”

At this point, the boy’s father called for him to catch up with his family. The boy yelled back “Hold on just a second dad!”. The little boy was watching us with anticipation that maybe this crazy man was going to throw his baby in the fountain, and that maybe this baby was trained to pick up quarters like a Greek sponge diver. I looked up at the boy, and tried to look slightly surprised but nonchalant. Nancy and I laughed for quite a while. My pastor Michael was right. Your kids become your co-conspirators.

To be continued