curly-headed cowboy chef with a splint on his gimp-arm

my spastic child

Nathan, for some reason, finally decided he was going to ride his bike. I was completely overjoyed. He also expressed interest in a skateboard and roller skating. Good wholesome boy-ish physical activity. Glory halleluiah!

Of course, he insisted on being helmeted. And performing 82 safety checks. And anything that can distract him while he is undertaking one of these physical acftivities is totally not a good idea. Like should he have the sun visor on his helmut up, or down? Or up? Or down? Or should he use this gear, or that gear?

He rides his bike briefly on Monday afternoon. I say briefly, because the amont of time actually spent on his bike was brief in comparison to the amount of time we had to spend listening to him complain about how much his bottom hurt from riding his bike.

Now we reach the part of our story where you find out I am THE WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD! So I took the child roller skating. He falls on his wrist. I give it the once over. Tell him to shake it off. It's fine. You're fine! Suck it up! What do I know? It's not like I'm a doctor!

He goes over to Mom's that night. I tell Mom don't let him whine on and on about the wrist! He will, if you let him! I come to pick him up later in the evening, and he is sitting in the chair with an ice pack on the wrist. What do I know? It's not like I'm a doctor!

So the next morning, the hand/wrist area is considerably swollen. I take him to the doctor and they x-ray it. That's how the doctor is one-up on me, they have that handy-dandy x-ray equipment. Whatever! The hand is so swollen, they can't tell if there's a fracture or not. There's a questionable area, so they send the x-ray off for a second opinion so we'll know whether or not he needs a cast. Right now, he's in a splint. No, unlike my initial medical examination, I will not be the one responsible for casting his arm, if needed. I will go to a licensed physician.

I'm sure this set us back light-years with the whole physical activity thing. Sigh. The doctor told Nate no biking and no skateboarding! I thought geeeeezzzz! We JUST finally got the kid to do those things! Now he'll probably just want to hide in the house and work on long division and logic problems! Or . . .

Brokeback Mountain
More Nathan stuff. He'd kill me if he knew I was writing this. Kill me dead. The other day, he found his cowboy hat and boots and decided he wanted to dress up like a cowboy. Hooray for another fine boy-ish activity! He goes into the bathroom and comes out with younger daughter's pink sponge rollers. He asks me to put them in his hair, so his hair will be curly like a cowboy's. NO, I will NOT. Then he asked me if I would use the curling iron on his hair. No, I didn't do that either.

So after this I completely abandoned all masculine, testosterone-inspired activities and took Nathan to "Pass Your Plate." They have a web-site at

www.passyourplate.com

We made 11 dishes in 1 hour and 45 minutes. I think it was a pretty good value. $159. We'll see. I figured it was worth a try.

I didn't intend for this to be a fun activity for Nate, I intended to get stuff cooked for the fam. But I hyped it up to Nathan. He had a blast. He is already asking to go back. He wanted to know if he didn't get into trouble for the rest of the school year, if that could be his special reward . . . to go back to PYP and make more meals for the family. I think that is a no-brainer.