And, it's April

It's spring break and the little man and I have been spending a lot of time together. Max turned 3 this week and is very proud of this fact. We feted him several times and he still beckons us to party on with more vim and vigor. We began with dinner with Max's cousins and my sister and bro-in-law. Well, actually, we started with Passover and I ran my first Seder. I would categorize my style as "speedy" and our focus was on having Elijah come in before 45 minutes had elapsed. While some of the spirituality may have been wrung from the event in the name of efficiency, I still think that getting to the 3rd cup of wine is an important accomplishment.

The first photos of the week came at the aforementioned dinner, and they started at dessert. We bought too much ice cream and too much hot fudge and too many sprinkles. No cake on Passover. Then, we made our own sundaes. It was, unsurprisingly, a mess. But a happy one.

Notice that Max is wearing his jacket at dinner? That's because he refused to wear a shirt that day. He just wanted to wear underpants(!) and putter around shirtless, peeing on stuff. I know that we have some books about potty training, but they seem unrealistic. They suggest things like enduring a lot of peed-on rugs and so on with the assumption that it will all work out. Ha! Max is pretty into being potty trained, and he has mastered peeing standing up, but he doesn't yet have the ability to play and also think about the feeling of having to pee. On that day, he ran through about 4 pairs of underwear before we just switched back to diapers. I think I am a bad parent in this regard.

Yet Max still seems happy. Yesterday, we bought some plants to plant and cavorted around a little farm around the corner. (Yes, there is a farm sort of around the corner.) He liked that and enjoyed riding around in a wheelbarrow. One of the things that seems coolest about being 3 is that you can ride in a lot of small things. Shopping carts, plastic toy cards, cardboard boxes, whatever. Max seems to immediately create a backstory to go along with whatever vehicle he is in or on, and I think that if I tried to make up as many scenarios and activities as he does in a day, I would be exhausted. Plus, the scenarios wouldn't be very entertaining. It's weird to realize that a toddler is essentially entertaining himself for days on end and is just happy to have me in a support role.

In this role, I took him to the Children's Museum, after a morning delay of wearing my garden gloves and playing obsessively with a balloon. The Children's Museum is, for Max, basically a room with some bubble tanks, another room with a lot of ramps and golf balls, and a place to eat lunch. Outside, there is a nice walk along the Fort Point Channel, which had some ducks and seagulls. This was a nice diversion as we left until I nearly dropped Max's glasses in the water and we took off before I could get into more trouble. Max crashed out as we started to walk, thereby ruining a real nap, so we went to a playground and got haircuts. Sometimes I don't really follow my own logic, but I think we got good haircuts. The true highlight of the day came on the T in the morning, when a man approached us and introduced himself as one of the first students I taught social studies to. He is roommate to two other kids from the same class and works for the Secretary of State. Judging by where I saw him on the train, we probably live 5 minutes from each other. There's not much more one can hope for as a social studies teacher than that one of your students grows up to work for the Secretary of State and help people vote, so I was pleased.

At home, we opened more gifts and called grandparents to thank them. We welcomed Leah home from work and had Max's daily chat with the baby. He is very excited to be a big brother, though clearly he has no idea what is about to hit him. I suppose, though, that it isn't as if we have any idea what is about to hit us. When Max was born, we stopped being able to cook, clean the house, get things done at work, and speak in complete sentences. We'll just have to see how all that works when we add "parent a toddler" to the list. We let a huge bumblebee in the house and Leah chased it out as Max cheered and I hid. Thank god Leah is here, or the house would be full of bugs and I would have had to move out. I do not like bugs very much. I can only imagine them biting me, and I do not like being bitten.

Finally we were ready to head out to dinner. We went to see P, C, and E and jumped off the couch for a while, then ate cupcakes. E is an enthusiastic cupcake eater and couch jumper offer, and Max followed suit. It was another birthday celebration in a week of celebrations. Soon it will come to a close. Max will not be pleased with this news. He's getting good at the candle thing.