The “big” Boy, the Bunny and the T-shirt

Since becoming a parent I’ve noticed two things: all the cliches are true, and it’s nearly impossible to avoid them when talking about your child. So this post is basically an extended “they grow up so fast,” with picture.

I just took this picture at breakfast. “I realize I take a lot of pictures of him eating because it’s just about the only time he’s sitting still.” I find it especially poignant for two reasons:

First, he’s wearing a t-shirt we bought him last week on Ocracoke. They didn’t have toddler sizes, so we got him an extra small, thinking he’d grow into it. It fits.

Second, the bunny. I bought that for The Mrs in the days leading up to Conrad’s birth. Somebody had recommended having “focal points” to concentrate on during labor, and this was one of them.

Jean stared at that stuffed rabbit for hours during the most intense and meaningful experience of our “all three of our” lives. Now, two years and a bit later, the reason for that concentration is here, wearing boy’s clothes and getting blueberry juice on Mommy’s focal point.

“insert cliche”

Stethoscope!

Quick trip to the doctor today following a playground head bonk that turned out to be nothing. Although it seemed to make him smarter. As I was carrying him on my shoulders into the office, he reminded me I’d left my iPhone in the car. Then he said, “Conrad go to doctor,” despite the fact that I had studiously kept that fact from him up to that point, and that he’d never been to that doctor’s office before. Somehow he figured it out.

After totally cracking up the nurse practitioner who gave him a clean bill of health, he said, “I have fun at doctor.”

Conrad/Daddy air guitar party

Last night The Boy and I got up from the dinner table and had a little air guitar face-off before bath time. He had his rake, I had the red plastic baseball bat. We jammed to “Stolen Blues” by American Princes and “Stop the Rock” by Apollo 440 and got more than halfway into “Tattooed Love Boys” by The Pretenders before he started singing “Firetruck.”