Raising a son is awesome.  As a father, I get to bond in a way with my little boy that is beyond words many times.  But, every now and then I kind of have to question the games and/or antics I'm dragged into with my three year old son.  Like this morning…

Let me set the scene:  It’s Saturday, it’s high noon, and the temperature is a solid 90 degrees Fahrenheit with tropical humidity.

Despite this, my 3 year old son, Squirt, starts begging me to take him out to ride his bike which he just learned to ride without training wheels.  After a few minutes of his relentless begging I give in and tell him to put on his shirt and flip-flops (we are usually barefoot and shirtless).  Normally I wouldn’t venture outside in the middle of the day like this because it’s just too hot.  But, I love seeing Squirt ride his bike and since he learned, he hasn’t been riding beyond the yard.

He has no experience riding on the sidewalk sans training wheels let alone in the street so instead of riding alongside him I decide to jog so I can easily catch him if he starts to fall or stop him before he wanders into traffic.

Now I’m thinking we’re in for a nice sun burn but as soon as we got out on the street we were greeted with a soothing breeze coming off the sea.  So we set off on Squirts first “big boy” bike ride.  I had to coach him on staying on the side of the street, navigating driveways and avoiding sewer grills that would swallow his small tires.  Squirt practically lives on his bike so he didn’t have any problems; if anything, I had to consistently tell him to slow down.  He hasn’t had room before to really open up those tires so I was afraid he would get too squirrely and take a bad fall.  I jogged for a half mile between him and traffic then we took a break inside a restaurant for a quick drink before we started the return trip back home.  Suffice to say we both got a healthy dose of vitamin D that day and we have the tan lines to prove it.

If it wasn’t for Squirt I never would have known there was such a great breeze coming off the sea that day and the half hour we spent together turned an otherwise uneventful, hot and humid day into a great memory with my son.  We enjoyed it so much I took him out for another ride in the evening that same day for a TWO MILE ride.  Three days later my legs are still sore but I would do it all over again.

Saturday evening Squirt (age: 3) woke up from a nap and asked me to take the training wheels off of his bicycle.  I was dead tired from a little road trip we had taken that day but I said okay to his request and removed the training wheels from his bicycle despite the fact that I knew he couldn’t ride without them and he would ask me to put them back on in less that ten minutes, but I was just humoring him.  Our living room/dining room is somewhat spacious so I left him to his bicycle, sans training wheels, and returned to whatever was on TV.  After about only five minutes he says, “Dad, come see me ride my bike!”  So I got up to watch him not expecting much but again, I was humoring him.

Low and behold, the little guy takes off and RIDES ALL BY HIMSELF across the room, dodging the walls and furniture, and even braking to avoid hitting the wall on the other side.  I was speechless.  I ran to him, picked him up and gave him a big hug for that awesome accomplishment.  He absolutely floored me, I had no idea he could do that.  I put him back down and asked him to show me again, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  He picked up his bike, threw a leg over it and took off again.  All this time my wife was asleep, she was also tired from our road trip, but we had to show her so we both ran to the bedroom to wake her up.  She was equally amazed.

The rest of the night he practiced, going back and forth across the room.  Before the night was out I picked him up and asked him if he knew he could do that before we took off the training wheels.  With I smile he simply replied, “Yes.”  Amazing!!

The next morning he was dieing to go to grandma’s house so he could show off and ride with his two older cousins.  Check out his skills in the clip below, remember, he was doing this on his own five minutes after we took the training wheels off.  Imagine the fear he had to over come, the bravery he showed, even after taking a few crashes he still got up and jumped back on the bike.  I’m so proud of him.  He reminds me of when my brother and I used to attempt insane tricks on our skateboards around the neighborhood, we used to encourage each other by saying, “No fear! No fear!”  I’m so proud of him.  Now he can roll with the “big boys,” at least in the yard.

About 4:30 this morning I wake up to get a drink of water.  As I’m sipping my glass of refreshing, cold water I look up at my kitchen ceiling and see one of these uglies.

Dangerous Brown Recluse Spider

Aside from the usual gecko or army of ants we don’t usually get much critters inside the house.  I should also mention that I hate spiders, any one that knows me can attest to this fact.  This thing was probably three inches across and that is fucking huge to me.  Not to mention, I’ve never seen this kind of spider before so it was really intimidating and I did not want it in my house with my children.

My first reaction to the sight of this thing was, “Holy fuck!” followed immediately by, “How do I kill this thing?”

I tried swatting it down with a broom but the little shit was quick and crawled into a high storage shelf that adjoins the kitchen.  Great, now it had a shit load of places to hide and ambush me.  I needed better weaponry but only had the broom and bug spray.

For half an hour I prodded behind boxes and old tools.  Every time I moved something I could hear it crawling.  Judging only by the sound of it crawling I finally cornered it in a cardboard box.  Problem was, the box was huge and the shelf was six feet off the ground.  I could easily pull the box down but that would leave me vulnerable to its attack.

I wanted this thing dead so I managed to get the box down and outside where I located it in one corner and emptied a can of bug spray on it.

Many hours later I looked up these fun facts and pictures about its bite.

As indicated by its name, this spider is not aggressive and usually bites only when pressed against the skin, such as when tangled up within clothes, bath towels, or in bedding. A minority of brown recluse spider bites form a necrotizing ulcer that destroys soft tissue and may take months to heal, leaving deep scars. The damaged tissue will become gangrenous and eventually slough away. The initial bite frequently cannot be felt and there may be no pain, but over time the wound may grow to as large as 10 inches (25 cm) in extreme cases. Bites usually become painful and itchy within 2 to 8 hours; pain and other local effects worsen 12 to 36 hours after the bite with the necrosis developing over the next few day.

  

I lost about an hours sleep tracking and killing this thing but I couldn’t sleep well sharing the same house with it.

I've never been much of a bookworm but now that I am a parent think reading would definitely be a good trait for Squirt to pick up.  I'm ashamed to say that in the three plus years since he was born I've hardly read anything to him.  However, for the benefit of my son, and I guess myself as well, reading 'books' is a habit I will have to pick up.

Last night I read a bedtime story to him for the very first time.  I wasn't sure how Squirt would react to a bedtime story but I'm happy to say it went very well, much better than I expected.  The book I read to him was a Pinocchio pop up book with rhyming words.  We settled into bed together and he seemed very excited.  He was smiling and laughing after the very first page.  I stopped along the story to explain to him who the characters were in the illustration and he loved it.  He even asked me to read it AGAIN.  It was relieving to see him enjoy a book so much because, in the back of my mind, I knew we really should have been doing this all along.  We read the book again while sharing his pillow and he loved it.  I had to put the book away and turn off the lights for him to stop asking to read it again and agree to go sleep.

Tomorrow I will pick up another book for him and hopefully we can make this a new bed time ritual.