Best. Saturday. Ever!

To think it all started out with Newt Gingrich and it just kept getting better from there. My 3.5-year-old came in as I was finishing up the Gingrich post and took one look at the photo and announced, “Bad Guy!” (Not much gets by that kid. I gotta be more careful what I say and do around him.)

The Young Man is in fine form today, meaning we could leave the house and go do stuff, despite the fact that he’s in the middle of his weekly fecal offload (another issue for anther day). Luckily, I recognized the signs and signals in time and transitioned him from briefs to pull-ups about a half hour before the shitstorm started. The first one was so pronounced it looked like he was growing a tail under the pullup.

But before that we hit the farmers market and bought some kettle popcorn and played a game at a booth that rewarded us with a Roma tomato plant, which we took home and planted.

We had hot dogs for lunch while watching Bill Maher’s HBO show, then went out and played in the yard before it got too hot. He watered the grass till it was muddy then splashed around in the mud. Came back in, cleaned up and had some cookies and milk while watching “Thunderball” on TCM. What was state-of-the-art big-screen violence in its day is all-ages fare now. Well, practically.

Then, on a completely spur-of-the-moment impulse, I decided to take him swimming at the neighborhood community pool. He hasn’t been swimming in at least a year, and a year in the life of a three-year-old is a long time. Wasn’t sure how he’s react to it. The sunlight, the noise, all those people, all that water… there were so many things that could have pushed his panic button. He’s bold when he’s in a familiar situation, but new situations tend to bring out the wallflower in him until he’s conquered them.

Still, it was relatively easy to lure him into the water as this community pool’s first gradation of depth is one inch. (Good job, pool-people!) It also helped that most of the people there with us were also parents with young children, and the place was crawling with buffed, tanned, indifferent-looking lifeguards, so the potentially scary rough horseplay was kept to an absolute minimum.

Plus he had a pair of vise-like deathgrips on my forefingers. Neither one of us was going anywhere without the other.

After about 10 minutes in, wading up to his bathing suit top, he got concerned and said he wanted to go home. I paid $5.75 for the two of us to get in, I really didn’t want to leave after 10 minutes. Plus, goddammit, I wanted to achieve a parenting success here, and ten-minutes-and-out is nothing to write home about, let alone a blog entry. So I said, “Okay. Are you scared?” He said, “Yeah…”

I said “Okay,” and put my arms around him, lifting his feet off the pool bottom and scooshed us back to the lip of the pool. When we got there, I said, “Okay, Daddy just needs to rest here for a minute, okay?” He said, “Okay.” So we sat there together, him completely resting in my arms, and watched the other kids playing in the water. He was fascinated. After a little bit, he squirmed out of my arms and took my finger again and pulled me back out into the pool. “Come on, Daddy. I want to go this way.”

And I spent the next 45 minutes getting pulled all around the shallow end of the pool, venturing as far into the deep end as the bottom of his chin. He laughed and commented the whole time. After a while, he let go of my hands completely and only grabbed me when he wanted to go in a different direction.

When I began to worry about us being out in the sun too long and suggested we head on back home, he didn’t want any part of it. But I guess I planted the seed because it was only another ten minutes or so after that he walked himself up the stairs out of the pool and over to our blankets.

I was so pleased. If we had had a bad experience there, he’s old enough now that he could remember it well enough to fuck with his head, and make the inevitable future swimming lessons a traumatic event for him. Instead, by not pushing him too hard too fast, he can’t wait to go there again next weekend with Mommy, too. (Mommy’s away on business this week.)

Came home, had some more popcorn and watched a little bit of “You Only Live Twice,” before he began curling up on the couch. I turned down the TV volume and said, “You want to take a nap?” “Yeah… carry me?” and held his arms out. He doesn’t really ask to be carried much these days. It was very sweet and I was happy to comply.

He went down for his nap in record time. I came in here to check my email and found a rare laudatory comment left on a YouTube clip of my mid-90s band, which never happens because we weren’t really that good to start with, and the videos that survived never seem to have captured the performances I was giving in my mind. Then there was the beer and the box-wine... But I digress.

I’m telling you, I’m considering going out and buying a lotto ticket. I don’t allow myself many good days a year, but I definitely checked one off today. By the time he gets up from his nap, TCM will be showing “Blue Hawaii” as our bachelor Week comes to a close.

The next time I’m bellyaching about what a rough life I have, I’m going to remember this day, have myself a Coke and a smile shut the fuck up.