Language skills? Check.

I’m not worried about any elements of Max’s developmental progress. He’s not great at catch, sure, but that should turn around with some practice. And any shortfall in his basketball handling abilities is wildly overshadowed by his language skills. I will give  you an example. One of his new birthday books is ‘Scaredy Squirrel’ and as we went to read it today, he told me that he thought the ‘the part about antibacterial soap was hilarious’. Antibacterial?  Hilarious?? The number of words he recognized/read in the book was astounding. Combining his burgeoning reading skills and his new-found burst of imaginative play on his own puts him on track for happily reading on his own in the next few years.

I can hardly imagine what our evenings will be like when he can find a comfy chair and settle in with a big book while Ma and I read our own books. That will be something to see.

In other news, my mother has visited the grim specter of the future in the form of her lawyer, and there is going to be talk of wills and power of attorney and all the fun things that go along with it. This is another reminder that I’m getting older and I’m in a distinctly different phase of my life. I don’t know what this phase is, but the first few signs  have been hair loss and death talk. Off to a bad start, new phase.

 

There’s a hole in daddy’s haircut

Ah, male pattern baldness. The old man bring-down that makes it impossible to hide your decrepitude. Yes I know some guys go bald when they’re in their teens, and I feel bad for them. I am trying very hard to throw out my own self-pity and vanity over the sad state of coverage on the top of my scalp, but despite my efforts to rise above it, I keep looking in the mirror and sighing.

But why should I be so forlorn at the great hairline retreat? Fear of how I’ll look as a balding dude is the first part of it. All of my mental self-images are built around a guy with a full head of hair, so seeing the plain truth will be quite a shock. How am I currently compensating? barbershop avoidance. If I don’t go to the barber, I don’t have to find some way to say ‘make me look as good as you can with the little you have to work with on top’. My three options are to swallow my pride and go to the barber, pull out the clippers, admit total defeat and shave my head, or just let it grow. Tonight, I’m firmly in the ‘let it grow’ camp. I’ll be a long hair, balding, creepy hippie. I call this hair style “The Denial”. It’s not a comb over, it’s a comb back. Still lame, I know.

This is the most obvious indicator of my shift into a new social category. I was at the Knights Hockey game last night, and I realized that I belong more in the group of older guys with grey hair (or bald dudes) than the smug looking 20 something dudes. The good news is that both groups turned and watched two hot girls walk by, so we are all brothers of a sort.

 

I felt good for a minute there…

But it passed. Whew! I was frightened that I would be malady-free and without physical complaint, but luckily a tension headache came in to take the burden of my discomfort from my fading cold. No downstairs computing for me tonight. Why? Well, my computer ‘desk’ (salvaged wooden banquet table) is wildly unsuited for this purpose, and my chair is uncomfortable and the arms are too low. These elements work together to strain my neck and pinch a nerve in my back. I’m done complaining for now. Moving on!

Max’s friend Bryson came over for another playdate today, and things went well. Bryson is getting more accustomed to paying attention to me when I talk, instead of assuming I’m just a noisy piece of scenery. The boys spent over half an hour chasing each other through the kitchen and living room. Our main floor layout is really suited to running tiny laps, and they had a great time circling by me. I am struggling a little bit with restraining my urge to correct language errors. Bryson has a little difficulty with his verbal skills, and he’s already receiving  speech therapy for it. I am compelled to meddle in the  situation and try to give him my untrained help, but I think it might be better if I avoid focusing on it. It’s hard to let it slide though. He uses ‘me’  instead of ‘I’ so there’s a lot of tarzan talk: ‘Me want to help”. The important thing is that his speech is much, much better than it was 6 months ago, and he’s a great kid who Max likes.