I did mean to blog Friday, really I did. But I did the 12 hour childminding marathon that included a birthday party and bedtime, so I was pretty drained by 8PM. For the record, the wife gave me an hour or so break during the afternoon, so it wasn’t an uninterrupted shift. Still, much love for the single parents out there. I am glad I don’t have to run the whole show all day, every day.

And then Saturday I helped the sister-in-law move, and that move went pretty well. I may not have many marketable skills, but I am a good mover. Saturday night was leisure night and I frittered that away with reckless abandon. Sunday I was the most tired man ever and the blogging opportunities just slipped by me without notice. So now we are here, and I am determined to write something before I fall asleep. Which, given the late night and restless night I had last night, could be at any moment, so off we go!

There’s a moving target that I try to keep in my sights. I try very hard to balance the challenge of anything the boy will encounter with his capability level. And of course he’s improving at everything all the time, with the occasional startling slip back, so it’s a tricky situation. Let’s get specific, shall we? When I’m preparing the little dude’s food, I used to leave the individual components in their un-combined state so that he can eat each one with ease. so, instead of a sandwich, he would get cheese sticks, ham rolls, toast, tomato and cucumber slices, and ketchup to dip. Then it occurred to me that I should start building up the complexity, so I would make the sandwich, but cut it into many small pieces to facilitate the picking up and eating. Now I’m trying out the real deal. Full sandwich, cut in half. This is pretty thrilling stuff, I know.

I can spend the time thinking about the difficulty rating of his upcoming meal because I have the luxury of time that being a parent of only one child affords. When there are other kids in the house, you’re a little too busy to over-analyze the sandwich compatibility matrix. The same progression in challenge still happens in busier households, but it’s a more organic process. When you’re trying to feed a wiggly baby, you have less time for cutting the older child’s food into pleasing geometric shapes, so when things are rushed, they get what they get and they like it.

Can I screen my child’s potential friends for the rest of his life? No? Well, I don’t care for that. I think I usually strike a pretty good balance between my intellectual desire for letting Max interact and experience with the world (good and bad) and my emotional need to hover and protect. I know he needs to make mistakes and bad choices to learn how to properly recover from them, but I still like to moderate the challenges to take some of the risk away. I meddle, it’s what I do.

Earlier in the week during a walkabout with the wife, the little dude spied a pack of neighborhood boys. The pack ranged in age, most of them much older than Max, but when they started to run, he wanted to join in. This pack of lads was unsupervised, and they were full of energy and rambunctious childhood rashness, so they wouldn’t be considered the best companions for a 3-year-old. He did join their pack for a bit (with my wife keeping a watchful eye from a few feet behind), albeit without official invitation. And, since he didn’t have a weapon (they were playing guns, naturally), the game moved on without him and he came in for a quick snack break.

While he was inside, he kept talking about going back outside with ‘the boys’ and playing with them. Aside from my trepidation at his running around with the older crowd, he was also weathering a hearty cold, and the walk outside had turned his nose into a snot faucet. So, I gently suggested he stay inside and warm up while having a rest, and the sadness burst forth from within. He was so forlorn at not joining up with the boys that I felt terrible. I want to give him all of the social play opportunities he asks for, but the cold was already inviting a cough to the party and I had to be the bad guy.

I guess it’s another part of parenthood that you have to make your peace with: your child will have friends that you don’t approve of. You can’t supervise every relationship they participate in, and sometimes they’re going to hang out with the smelly kid with the shifty eyes. But hopefully we can keep him out of the wilder rumpus’ for a little while longer.