Goodbye Summer!

OK, I haven't been as good about posting as I thought I would be but I was having fun outside. Ahhh summer, it comes and goes so fast. I remember as a kid the summers seemed to last forever but now as an adult they just whiz by. I think that this happens because the time period becomes a much smaller percentage of your life as you age and so feels shorter. For Max, 3 months is 1/20th of his life and for me it is 1/176th! No wonder! In August, Max went on a big boy trip to the TimberRidge Lodge Water Park, canoed on the Root River, went shopping for school supplies and clothes, and went swimming with his grandparents at the Decoven pool. 2 weeks of fun before he started kindergarten.

The Big Boy Trip
The Timber Ridge was a great little special "big boy trip". For one evening we got an awesome room with a kitchenette and all access to the 65,000 square feet of water park! Boy, did he have fun. One of highlights from the trip would be the rolling country roads that we took, "Weeeeee! Mom? You know how I know you are going to fast?" "How?" "My penis hurts." Being the mother of a boy is far more complicated than I thought it would be, that penis shows up in everything. "What do you mean?" I asked. "When I am driving in a car my penis tells me that we are going too fast over the bumps because it hurts and tells me you need to go slow." Now, I am not a male of the species but I have never heard of the male genitalia operating as a speedometer in any capacity. I will make mention though that my dear father, when told this story, corroborated Max's musings about his wiener. You can also assume correctly that Max and I had a very long discussion about penis', speedometers, and the global misunderstanding of both.
I created a mantra on the way to the room in the lodge that went something like this, "Don't run, no running, slow down, Don't run". Although it was not highly effective it did keep Max from running a long distance and therefore he never reached that critical penis speed that might cause injury to himself or others. We changed into our swim suits and with the mantra to guide us, we went to the water park. "Holy Moly!!!!" Max spent the next 5 hours (with a break for dinner) jumping, splashing, swimming, floating, screaming, being cool, being tough, and creating a state where quantum mechanics takes over. Quantum mechanics defines energy as being proportional to the time derivative of the wave function. What does this have to do with Max you ask? Well, the more TIME he spent in the WAVEs the fewer units of ENERGY that he was able to create. "MOM!! I can't get out of the pool!" splash! Climb, splash! He was so exhausted that he could no longer climb out of the pool via the ladder so after a parental butt boost, our day was coming to a close.
Flash forward and we are home. Max has crossed over and was not occupying his body when I attempted to revive him. When he did finally rouse he climbed out of the car in a daze and tried to pick up things on the garage floor that were not there. "I can't get it!" "I know, you need to wake up" I coaxed. He staggered to the house like a drunk who was miserably failing the sobriety test. We got in the house and Max started up the stairs when....He crumpled in a heap on the stairs and tears ran from his eyes as he gasped for breath. He was laughing harder than I have ever seen him laugh and he just couldn't stop or walk, or speak, or move. When the attack ended I was able to undress him around smaller bursts of hysteria and get him into bed where he again folded up into a trembling ball of flesh that reddened and flailed with emotional release. "What is so funny?" I begged. He writhed as though he was being tortured, he hit the pillow and rolled back and forth. "What is so funny?" I begged. "Everything!" he groaned and then, he was asleep. All in all, a good day I would say.
Canoeing Max also took a fun day trip with his dad on the root river in a canoe, "Guess what mom?" "What?" "Me and dad went canoeing and we got stuck, but I used my paddle and rescued us from all the trees and bushes!" Later when I was putting him down to sleep..."There is one thing that we couldn't get rescued from." "What was that?" I asked "The stinkin' mosquitoes!!!"
School Supplies "OK Max, we need to try another store." "But why mom?" "Because they don't have anything but pencils!!!" I don't remember being exasperated as a kid shopping for school supplies, but what a frickin' pain as an adult!!! We went to 3 stores and luckily Office Max had everything except the Kleenex and snacks. Almost $70 later we got everything on the list and Max struggled with not being able to use all of that stuff, but he resisted and I got a couple extra glue sticks which helped.
Swimming The Saturday before school started Max's Oompy and Boompy(grandma and grandpa) joined us on our weekly pool excursion to the DeCoven Center. We swam and splashed and Boompy swam underwater the length of the pool! He is like Aquaman without the unitooth! Max showed off all of the cool things he could do at the pool, like using the water noodle as a giant water blowgun, swimming on his own with his swim vest, and of course, causing internal hemorrhaging in those whom he used as a push off point to get away quickly. School
September 1st - Max's first day of school. He put on the back pack that is bigger than he is, he had his lunch packed in the special brown paper bag, and he climbed on the bus. The adventure begins and summer is over. *Sigh*