Summertime, Fathertime

"Where's that kid with my Latte??"

My company gives us four days during the summer to take off and do summery type New York things. Bake asphalt, recycle old people, play Guess Which Subway Car Has No A/C. I think my boss wishes I gave him more than 40 minutes notice but I'm not wasting one of these precious things on a day when it might rain. Only on the morning of can I predict that with absolute accuracy. So, we've gone to Long Beach a couple of times. Alina has her little bungalow that blocks UV and we manage to keep every grain of sand off her skin. She's not a big fan (<-- that's a web link, geezers) of the ocean just yet. But she has time. Assuming Palm Beach isn't under water again this November we're going to make another attempt at our time share. This will be the 4th year and I have yet to stay there for all 7 days whether it's due to lack of vacation time, Third Watch, or Hurricane Wilma. If nothing else, the water will be warmer. Item: Katrina and I actually made it out to a movie together. Like, in an actual theater - alone. We left Alina with her Nana (Katrina's mom) and we saw X-Men 3. This was actually by Mommy's request. How lucky am I? She made me promise I'd go out during the movie and call just to check though. But, again we all survived. My phone was running low on battery because we were in the basement of the theater so I actually had to turn it OFF to conserve. We were out of contact for about an hour! I think if Katrina had known that at the time, she'd have backed over me with the car.

My standard comeback for the How's the baby? question has lately been: "Oh, she just lost her job at Target and she's dating. It goes so fast." Although I'm forgetting who I've told that to and one person has already called me on that. I'm starting to feed Alina more, which if you don't know you're a parent yet, really helps focus that reality. See, since she has been on the boob almost exclusively up to now and I'm not home during the day, Alina has been more like 'The Coolest Pet Ever,' instead of, 'My Child.' You carry her around, she's appreciative, you roll her around, she plays, makes sounds, she sleeps at night, she poops, she drools, she gets bathed - but so does my cat. I haven't spent enough time alone with her or doing anything that requires much Parental Responsibility to feel like a Father yet. But I think spoon feeding helps. It actually takes effort, it takes time. You feel the need to do it correctly. All that other Father stuff, or the stuff that would make me feel more like a Father - teaching, enlightening, discipline, values, trust, molding a mind, etc - seems far off. People walk up to us on the street and look at Alina and say "Cherish this. This is a really fun time." I don't dispute that. She's a blast and I couldn't be happier. It's going to get progressively difficult from the moment she starts crawling but, believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to the challenge. When Katrina sees this I'm sure she'll be more than happy to give me a gallon of frozen breast milk and go Here, Challenge-Boy. I'm going to a spa for the weekend. Where's your credit card? But I don't think I have enough cell phone minutes for her to be gone that long.