The hours from 5-7pm
aka the sprint
I try to get home around 5pm with the goal of stealing some quality time with the boy before he sleeps.
Bedtime begins at 6:30 and ends at an unspecified time. So I usually get an hour or two of what I would call the parental gamut.1
All of the highs and lows of parenting that the better half experiences throughout her entire day are consolidated, for me, into this one time chunk. It goes something like this…
First, we wrestle. Always. If “wrestle dada” isn’t the first thing I hear when I get home, then it’s the second.2 Right now wrestling is mostly running and tumbling around, but I genuinely look forward to more violent days.3
From wrestling, we naturally transition to building blocks. “Naturally” because both wrestling and block building occur on the ground in his room. Also “naturally” because the ground in his room has somewhere between 5 and 250 blocks on it at all times. So during the tumbling one of us inevitably finds a block.4
After building (and destroying) we kick the ball. Or we throw it. And that’s as specific as I can get. The idea of playing soccer and/or baseball remain distant dreams.
Then, the work begins. Starting with food.
Dinner involves some combination of three of these things—sausage, pickles, apple slices, applesauce, toast,5 chicken nuggets, pizza, banana (pronounced bélé), goldfish, chips and hummus, chips and salsa, cheese (in any form), and blueberries.
We pray before we eat, which he is just beginning to grasp. Then we see how long we can get him to stay seated at the dinner table with us. Anything over five minutes is a huge success. Whenever he gets up, we follow.
At this point, everything that follows dinner also includes dinner, if that makes sense. Meaning that in every step between dinner and the actual falling asleep food is made available to him. Diaper changing, bathing, putting pajamas on, and reading books all have food as a peripheral activity. The dinner plate is always near.
All this to say, I’ve seen him eat an entire sausage link in the bath. Something I think a French monarch would find aspirational.
During the bath, if he’s not crushing meat, we play with cups. Sometimes the boy wants to learn about male anatomy, but mostly I steer him toward blowing bubbles, which is just a roundabout way of drinking bath water.
After the bath, we stand in front of the mirror and scream at our reflections. Everyone but the dog finds this hilarious.
Then the boy picks out pajamas. Our decision to let him make this decision was a total lapse in judgment. He typically settles on his third or fourth choice.
Then the boy picks three books to read. See above paragraph.
The better half usually reads. She’s great with voices and meticulous about saying every word on every page.6 When I read, I make up everything. My version of The Big Red Barn includes a conspiracy amongst the animals to overthrow the farmer, which I feel confident is a plot the boy in no way comprehends.
Those are the only two ways to read books to children. Neither is right or wrong, but mine is better.
After reading, one of us gets to rock the boy to sleep. This is either the highest honor in that it caps off a wonderful day. Or it’s the greatest burden in that it tests the final straw of patience. Usually the former.
There’s something about the weight of a dependent human being on your chest that slows the world down. In that moment, you’re doing exactly what you were designed to do.
Lastly, we sing songs. Me: our church’s benediction and Chance the Rapper. Her: Holy, Holy, Holy and the Baylor fight song.
Then, he sleeps. And at that point, nothing else really matters.
Thanks for reading this far.
-jd
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Content
James - Someone close to me has predicted this book will win some awards. We’ll see if she’s right…
Survivor - Rachel’s decision to play her shot in the dark with the goal of reading players’ reactions to gauge if she should then play her idol was truly elite gameplay.
Waltz for Maybe Radio - The perfect peaceful time playlist to end the evening.
Camera Roll
We’re building a deck. Pray for us.
Question
What’s the happiest hour of the day? For me, it’s probably 7-8 because it includes the moment the boy goes to sleep and ushers in a time of pure relaxation.
Also, if you’ve made it all the way down here, consider forwarding this email to your smartest and funniest friends. But if you have one person in your friend group who is both the smartest and funniest friend, do not forward this to them. They already have enough.
As in the phrase “run the gamut,” which, of course, I know you know, but I’m annotating here because you and I both know that’s not how we thought gamut was spelled and on its own it’s a completely disorienting word.
Either the boy greets me with “wrestle dada” or the better half greets me with “he’s outside.” Both of which make me glad to be home.
Not in like a Von Erich kind of way but in like a practicing our form tackling into a pile of pillows kind of way. Don’t think too hard about this.
Usually in my spine or shoulder blade.
This is actually just a raw slice of bread that we refer to as toast. Sometimes served with butter.
I completely gave up on this when in the early days all he would do is flip the pages as fast as he could. We’re now at a place where I should reconsider my approach, but, in a stubbornness that I meet face-to-face in my offspring every day, I refuse to do so.