Don't Tread On Me

Today is July 4th.

It is difficult to maintain train of thought with the crackle of bottle rockets as background music, but I'll try. This year, Independence Day has been exceptionally disappointing, as the weather is just terrible, 70ish and rainy. Dylan fell asleep around 10 and I'm not far behind him.

Yesterday, we attempted the Taste of Chicago, but it ended up a disaster. We took the train because Dylan has never been on it. Our train was about 40 minutes late leaving the station.
Dylan was occupied for about 11 minutes total, after which he decided to play I spy, which is an impossible game on a train as the scenery is obviously ever-changing. Once we got there, and after a long, tiring walk through a sea of people, we found ourselves in line for food tickets at about 8:23 p.m.
...not knowing that ticket sales end at 8:30 p.m., we watched as they flipped the "Open" sign to "Closed" in front of our very faces. Slowly, I exhaled, looked at Dylan's panicked eyes, and realized that this was not something worth mourning - not even for a minute - and explained to him what a non-big deal this was. We headed through another endless crowd of people and found ourselves at a chain-restaraunt, eating potato soup and drinking tea. We missed the fireworks.

En route to the train station to head home, we stopped here, where Dylan insisted on playing in the water and my ever-present momguilt allowed him to.

While the experience left him wet and shivering, he got a few minute's thrill out of it. Who am I to take that away?

Things have been hectic lately, leaving me without much time to blog. I'm sorry to those of you who read this for that. I'll try harder. In the time that has passed, Dylan has cut his own hair:
Received a stern talking-to about making better choices, and learned to laugh at his own ridiculous-ness. I didn't make a huge fuss about the hair incident. At first, I think the shock of it infuriated me more than anything. I really thought he knew better and wouldn't pull something like that. I was proven so wrong when I stepped out of the bathroom and saw him looking like a little dutch boy who got his head stuck in a weed-eater. Needless to say, we headed straight for a haircut joint and discussed the situation on the way. He was ashamed, knew he knew better, and promised to never take such things into his own hands again. I, in response, hid all of the scissors I could find within a five mile radius in a very high location that I will never disclose.
Yes, the photo is funny. I must have laughed for 20 minutes when he came up to me to show me what he'd found. But, damn...that hair is something else.

T-ball has ended. Dylan played a good season that I, regrettably, was not always able to attend. I look forward to baseball, as I know he will do well. He seems like a natural talent. He just needs to work on his attention span. Here is a photo of the new haircut on the day of his last game:

What a big kid. How did that happen? I could pour out some 'it seemed like just yesterday's', but I'll spare everyone.

I am so proud of who Dylan is turning into. He is so rambunctious, overjoyed at the thought of doing anything new and bringing along anyone who will come. He is easy to be around, generally honest as long as his ass isn't on the line, and one of the funniest people I know. The best thing about being us is that we never have to do anything alone. I never feel lonely and neither does he. He is my comrade, hands-down the very best friend I have ever had. I don't like to go many places without him and when I do, I spend a good chunk of the first hour there wondering what he is doing and if I have forgotten to tell him anything important, like how much I love him.

Dylan seems to understand me better than anyone else in my life. He knows what I mean before I have to explain. We generally want the same things at the same times. We agree on what days would be good lazy days and what days would be good galavanting days (Sunday Funday, obviously.) We can share our dinners, share a beach towel, share a seat, share a spoon, share a tee-shirt, and neither of us complains. We can sleep in the same bed rhythmically and without disturbing each other, yet somehow wake up at congruent 45 degree angles.

And, this child, he can make me laugh harder than anyone I know, and I, him. We can lay in an empty room and remain entertained for as long as necessary. We rarely mind waiting when the situation calls for it and our humor compliments the other's just perfectly.

I'm lucky to have someone who gets me, and not because of any extranneous effort. It's just the way things are after spending almost 7 years together. Who would have thought such a perfect thing existed?

Not me, no way, not if I wasn't living it every day of my life.

It's an interesting thing, raising a child. Despite all the uncertainties in life, you are the one they look to for just that - to be the certain one. I try hard not to look Dylan in the eye and tell him "I don't know." I am constantly looking for solutions to problems, answers to questions, explanations for the way things are - in an effort to keep him from worry. Lord knows there have been times I have held desperately on to him because he was the only certain thing in my whole life, but God bless us, he has never known that was the situation at any given time.

There are these silent moments that generally occur while he is sleeping or sitting quietly in the car looking out the window that I notice that he hasn't a care in the world. I realize this human has the utmost level of trust in me...and it baffles me because I am always so unsure of myself. But I believe there is a layer of confidence that one only obtains in parenthood.

It is not the confidence that I know what I am doing - because I rarely do.
It is not the confidence that every thing will work out - because it rarely does.
It's not even the confidence that we will figure every little thing out - because it's never that easy.

It is the confidence that my heart is in the right place, that I am putting forth all the effort one human can. It is a confidence in hope. A belief in grace. I have a quiet, unspoken, undetectable confidence that I will overcome any obstacle that detours me -regardless of scale- and that he will be there with me.


"To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while." ~Josh Billings