Adventures Of Fatherhood

I often find myself wondering what my kids will be into as they grow up.

At their ages, Beckett, 3, and Carson, 20 months, it’s a huge unknown, obviously, what they want to do later in life. That’s not what I think about, it’s more along the lines of what will they like and enjoy growing up. Will it be sports, art, music, reading, surfing, skating, etc.?

With Beckett, some obvious early signs indicate he’s going to be a performer of some sort.

Not only because he’s an exhibitionist, but also due to the fact he is often found strumming his air guitar and singing into anything that has a round end, including, but not limited to, a garden hose.

What’s most funny about this is it’s usually unprovoked and without any music being played at all.

It’s a common scene in our backyard for Beckett to grab a hose, the end of a shovel or even a stick and belt out a few lyrics.

While watching him hunt around the yard for something to use as his mock microphone last weekend, my wife took it a step farther.

While carrying around his favorite badminton racket, which now features a rope tied to each end in a sort of guitar strap fashion, she hooked him up with a quasi-microphone stand.

What it was actually was a “mister” we can hook up to a hose that creates mist on hot days. It stands upright and is about three feet tall, making it the perfect height for Beckett to use as a microphone.

While elsewhere in the yard with Carson, I observed as Pam set Beckett up with his guitar (badminton racket) and his microphone stand (our backyard mister). He went right along with it and played a few of his favorites, such as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Oh Susanna”.

What amazed me was he often took his right hand, while the left was seemingly holding the chord on the guitar (racket), and grabbed the microphone in a similar fashion as Bono did at the U2 concert Pam and I just attended last month. He seems to be a natural entertainer.

With Carson, he appears to be the ballplayer of my boys.

Beckett likes a ball as much as the next kid, but Carson cannot contain his excitement when he has his hands on a ball.

At his age, he’s not really capable of doing anything with it yet, other than dropping it and kicking it across the room, but that’s okay with him.

He’s thrilled to simply run around with a ball in his hands, no matter the size or type, and play his own game. That’s enough of a fascination at this point.

When I see him pick up a ball and run across the yard with a huge smile on his face, I think football could be his sport.

Continuing with these thoughts, artistic talent does not appear to be something that comes naturally to either of my boys, at least at this early age.

As all parents do, we keep anything our kids create and these arts and crafts projects usually land on the fridge for a spell.

It’s always with excitement that we view these works, such as a finger paint “collage” of sorts from Beckett or a sampling of a crayon coloring session from Carson.

While I agree with Pam that we should keep them, I’m just not so sure each and every piece of “art” needs to be so proudly displayed in the house. My feeling is maybe some of them should be admired for a minute or two and then relegated to a keepsake box to view years from now for a good laugh.

She agrees for the most part, but somehow they do end up on the fridge for a week or two for our viewing pleasure, no matter what they look like.

This is something I get a kick out of because I’m the least artistic person I know.

My mom can attest to this, as she still has some of my art creations from high school and before. They are pitiful, particularly some sort of pottery I made in high school that was supposed to be an ashtray but turned out more like a waffle.

What amazes me is she has kept it all these years, for some reason. That’s a mom thing, and Pam’s the same way.

Years from now, I do look forward to going through all these projects and laughing with my boys as we review them. They will have their mom to thank for that.

Over the last two months, we have been routinely awoken by Beckett screaming his head off in the middle of night. It’s become a major problem.

Although it’s something we think will ultimately make matters even more difficult in the future, we have broken down in recent weeks to simply letting him jump in bed with us.

Exhaustion and the fact we do not want him to wake up his little brother across the hall made the decision for us on a couple tough nights.

Now, while I know it’s spoiling him to do this, I must admit I like it a lot because it’s very special to have my little boy nestled in between me and Pam. He sleeps incredibly soundly in bed with us and I love seeing him so peacefully asleep, particularly when he spent the preceding 20 minutes crying hysterically.

Aside from the fear he’s going to become accustomed to sleeping with us, the other unfortunate aspect is the random elbow and knee shots he delivers in his sleep.

I woke up one morning this week to an elbow blow squarely to the nose.

After that, I decided I would just start my day. Everything was up from that point on.

About The Author: Steven Green

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The writer has been with The Dispatch in various capacities since 1995, including serving as editor and publisher since 2004. His previous titles were managing editor, staff writer, sports editor, sales account manager and copy editor. Growing up in Salisbury before moving to Berlin, Green graduated from Worcester Preparatory School in 1993 and graduated from Loyola University Baltimore in 1997 with degrees in Communications (journalism concentration) and Political Science.