how do you define fun. fun use to be going out to a nice restaurant in the city. you know, the kind of place with soft lighting, beautiful interior, efficient waitstaff, and great food. fun use to be buying a sox ticket the day of the game. fun use to mean walking down to the somerville theater in davis square to catch a movie at a moments notice. sure i miss those things, but they’ve been replaced by a new different kind of fun. just the other night kelly and i went to a movie. yeah a just released movie. we went to see The Pacificer starring Vin Diesel at the Cinderella drive-in theater three miles from the house. okay, it wasn’t our first choice, but you can’t be too picky when you’ve got a three month old and not babysitter. you can probably figure out the plot. regardless we had a great time. so much so when we got home kelly wanted to make sure we checked the schedule for next week. the only difference is next time i’m wearing my PJs.
durango
jackson just returned from his first business trip. the trip was an eight hour journey from denver to durango, colorado. that included a few stops for jack and his parents along the way in what barely pass for towns.
as his parents made a presentation about one of their latest studio projects jack was fawned over by our client and others hosting the event. that was friday. saturday we walked around historic durango in search of penny squishing machines, people watching and drinking coffee. since we spent all day thursday driving to durango and all day sunday driving back to denver we decided our time was best spent just walking around town. of course everbody who noticed jack commented on how cute he is (yes, i put that line in this entry to embarras jack at some point in the future).
saturday night we had thoughts of going to the Gaslight Theater to see Fever Pitch, but by then the movie had ended it’s run. plan B was to purchase a movie, On Golden Pond, which we watched on the computer in the hotel room. we probably could have gone swimming in the pool, but we didn’t bring our bathing suits. besides, the smell of chlorine could have knocked out an elephant let alone two thirtysomethings and a three month old.
hair!
whenever people meet jack for the first time they always comment on his hair. his crazy punk rock mohawkesque hair. we’re thinking of coloring it green, red, blue or something that really expresses jack’s inner rebellious teen. kelly and i admit to playing with jack’s hair to tease it into a pointy shape. it’s just fun.
this got me thinking about the vain practice of hair styling. jack doesn’t visit the salon okay, he did once because the woman who cuts my hair wanted to meet jack, yet he still maintains a well-coifed ‘do. why do we spend thousands of hours and dollars doing this? maybe if we only bathed twice a week like jack we could achieve the beautiful soft healthy hair that jack possesses.
i also can’t help but notice the similarities between jack’s hair and mine on certain days. granted, these days are often preceded by a timeframe of unknown length without showering on my part. hey, i’m a new dad. cut me some slack. whereas jack’s hair just happens, mine is the result of 2 a.m. feedings and sleeping soundly on my right side when i eventually fall asleep.
cowboy jack
last week kelly’s cousin denni came to visit us to meet jack for the first time. as part of her trip she wanted to stay at a dude ranch, so off we went to sedalia to ride horses in the mountains of pike national forest at lost valley ranch. we arrived on tuesday evening just in time for dinner. meat and potatoes. what else would you expect from a dude ranch. there was salad too. when the rangler came around to the table to ask about our level of riding experience denni said she wanted a feisty horse, kelly wanted a half-dead horse, and i wanted a horse with a cool name. denni ended up bruising a knee, kelly’s horse could only walk, and i rode a horse named sparky. sparky? no self-respecting cowboy would ride a horse named sparky. since i’m not a self-respecting cowboy i rode sparky wednesday morning and wasn’t in too much pain to ride him again on thursday morning. the west sure does look different from atop a horse, especially one named sparky. giddy up!!!
rolling on
jack rolled over today. somehow writing about it doesn’t seem as exciting as witnessing it for the first time. okay, i didn’t witness it, kelly did. as she tells it, she was yelling for me to come see but i was outside emptying the trash. so this brings up one of those scenarios that only parents experience. you want your kids to explore and experience new things, but then you realize there’s a whole new set of worries that go with the new experience. as for a newborn rolling over, the concern is how does he get back on his back. more sleepless nights, i guess.
so i can see the future. “great jack, you got your license. here, take the keys to the 20-year old CRV. i know it only gets up to 35 miles an hour, but check out that built-in card table in the back.”
oh yeah, there’s physical proof of this phenomenon. kelly mentioned that she noticed more gray hair on my head since jack was born.