Loading ...ah yesterday, it seems far away.
so try to stay with me here people, this will be a long one i think…
i took yesterday off b/c natty signed the capt up for swimming lessons. you see the boy loves the bath time, so we figured he’d love the swim time. so natty did the research and leg work to find lessons for him, you know the whole “mommy and me” type thing. she signed him up for lessons at a ymca a coupla towns over, and err yesterday was the first one.
so to help her out with they boy while she changed and also to capture the event on various forms of electronic media. so since i didn’t feel like juggling clients and the boy, i just took the day off. oh i had big plans too, a trip to ikea, clean and recaulk the bathtub..perhaps a run ot the local dumping station (not a code for anything, an actual trip to the dumping station).
well like all things planned, it didn’t work out. i slept in a bit, henry developed this weird cough, and by the time the baby went down for his nap, it wasn’t worth going to ikea. so i did some work-(some day off) and worked on the site and ended up changing the wiper blades on the subie. that’s about it. oh well.
so we headed off to ymca for the boy’s big adventure.
the y is like pretty much every ymca i’ve ever been to, i suspect that all of them were built with in the same week in 1981, but i can’t prove it. at any rate natty took the capt in to the ladies locker room to get both of them ready, and i headed through the men’s locker room to the pool area, cameras and all.
i was happy to see that there were other clothed people in the pool area, mothers and such watching kids in classes. soi found a spot on a bench and sat down. i then realized that it was 92 degrees adn so humid that water was dripping off the ceiling on my head. after a while natty came out with the boy, and you could tell he was terrified. i dunno if it was being with out a shirt in public, or the humidity or the 18 kids screaming and yelling and splashing around. i have my suspicions, but i’m not sure which.
aside 1: it’s amazing how i’ve changed since the boy made his arrival. before i just didn’t like loud people b/c they were, well loud–now i want to kill them b/c they’re loud, because loud scares baby, and scared baby cries, and crying baby makes me have to stop baby from crying. i’d like to think it’s some sort of protection instinct, but i think it’s more that i dont’ want to have to try to get the baby to stop crying, i dunno i’m all soft and mushy like that.
anyway. the capt didnt’ cry, he just sorta clung to natty, looking around like a scared, err baby. she brought him over to me, so that she could go do the pre pool shower thing, and move the stroller into the swim area (where else you gonna put the baby while you’re changing?). so at that point we had a full on car load of baby goods in teh pool area. excellent.
so the boy then clung ot me, looking around as if he was about to melt down, but not actually melting down. my mind started racing to the “he was a happy baby until, hmm around 7 months, then all of a sudden, everything freaked himout. well at least he’s rich now after he wrote his memiors on going to rehab on pluto–oh it’s all the rage now, go to teh end of the solar system to get clean, i saw it on oprah, she looks good for 98, don’t you think?” happy thought’s i’m prone to having.
eventually a swim instructor came over to talk to me and the boy–it turns out she was just a sub for the instructor, she had a lacrosse game so she couldn’t make it. it further turned out that the capt was the only one in his class–so they wanted to merge him in to another class. I pulled the typical husband/father “well my wife is incharge of all the scheduling”/i don’t want to deal with you angle, and the girl said ok. and went away.
natty came over, and the time came to get in the water. and so they did. the capt didn’t cry, he didn’t smile, he didn’t do anything, except cling to natty and look around like “what the fuck is all this crap and why am i here in the middle of it”
i guess i had visions of him frollicking around in the water like during bath time. no dice. so for the next 20 mins or so, the poor instructor tried to get him to smile, and he just sorta sat half in half out of the water. looking like we were traumatizing him.
then, they got out and natty took him to the locker room to change.
i hauled all the stuff, stroller included, through the men’s shower, lockerroom and hallway out to the main hallway that overlooks the main gym areas. sorta liek the landing to the 2nd floor of the brady bunch house, but well all athletic like.
hmm too long, time to break in to another post.