Last Saturday morning while Ames was shopping, Declan and Elsie were safely downstairs watching
Diego, so I ran upstairs to make sure I had all my cycling gear together for that day’s bike ride. I was upstairs for about two minutes when the phone rang.
David: Hello?
Woman: This is the Portsmouth Police Department. Do you have a young child with you?
David: Yes, two. What’s going on?
Woman: A boy just called us and said the house was on fire and there was a robber that needed to go to jail.
David: Oh my god.
Woman: Is everything okay?
David: Yes, I’m sorry, we-
Declan (picking up downstairs extension): Hello?
David: Declan James…
Declan: There’s a robber who needs to go to jail!
Woman: Are you sure everything’s okay?
David: Oh yes, we’re fine. I’m sorry, thanks.
Amy and I have been trying to teach Declan all the safety things you’re supposed to teach kids. He knows his full name, our names, his phone number. About a week ago, we told him that the number to the police was 911. We said if he saw a fire, or if he couldn’t find us and was scared, or if we couldn’t get to the phone and told him to get help, he should call 911. But we had just said it once – didn’t even explain what dialing 9, then 1, then 1 meant – it was just step one in our Beginner 911 Course.
Well, Declan decided to jump right to graduation.
I was a little proud but I had to hide that as I explained that we can only do that when it’s a real emergency, not a pretend one…
We had an awesome Valentine’s Day Party at the house the weekend before. A bunch of good friends and their kids.
Here’s Declan getting busted eating another cookie after having been told to stop eating cookies:
And here’s Elsie getting busted mixing up a martini:
Kidding Nana. She was just playing with the shaker…
Here are the kids at the mall this past Sunday. It was raining out but we needed to get out of the house - all the museums were closing so I took them to the mall to run around and ride on those little cars:
The cars were cool and they had fun riding – Elsie even liked them when they weren’t running. The rest of the trip was, of course, insanity, as they really took that
running around part to heart – and had very different ideas as to direction of said running.
Some other recent pics:
Oh, and as for karmic payback for all the shit I’ve given Papa over the years…
Cut my head:
Love how it’s framed perfectly in the center of that awkward V of baldness I have up front. Wish I could say I got the wound doing something cool like landing a plane in the Hudson. A few hours after I did it, after my group ride, I was sitting with the guys at a coffeehouse and when I took off my helmet one of them asked, “Man, what happened? Did you crash?”
Nope. Though that would have been cool, too.
Okay, I’ll say it. I hit my head on a shelf. I was in the closet. Looking for tights.
Oh sure, laugh all you want and make your jokes about a man in tights in the closet. But it was going to be cold on the ride that day. And sometimes a man needs to ride wearing tights.
Had to explain this to a million people in the week-and-a-half it took to heal up...
Sorry Papa. I take all those jokes back…
