What's in a Name?

4.23.2009

gonna tri!

I just signed up for a sprint triathlon this summer. Well, technically it is in September, but most of my training will be this summer. I might try for another sprint race in August, but I want to get some time training in the heat before I sign up for racing in it. Plus I have four and a half months to get ready for the race, so the pressure isn't on yet. But I am excited!!

4.19.2009

boys will be boys...

There is something remarkable about little boys. I am fortunate enough to have witnessed the shenanigans of many young boys between my nephews, my friends kids and my very own Devin and Alex, and I have to say that the creativity that little boys exhibit is truly inspirational. Their imagination can create the exotic from the mundane, like the time that Devin excitedly told me that he could make a gun out of his hand. He didn't need to build one or buy one, he was created with one. Joy! Just a few weeks ago Alex found his harmonica and wanted to play it for his friends at school. However, he realized that the harmonica itself was trivial without a few props. So he found himself a knit winter hat, pulled it down to his eyes and proceeded to play with gusto, just like the guys asking for change outside of the Back Bay station. Genius!
Nonetheless, I think that the true brilliance of little boys is realized only when they are in the company of another little boy. They need a comrade to help elevate them to the next level; to push them just a bit further. Maybe it's a competitive influence, like the way a runner likes to train with others that are just a bit faster so that they push themselves harder. Well, lucky for me, my boys have each other as training partners. So when they both need to go to the bathroom, one decides that they can use the toilet together to save time, and the other takes it a step further and suggests that they do "crisscross" (and they wonder why I am neurotic about keeping Isabel out of the bathroom).
I remember when Devin started preschool I was really surprised by some of the things that he learned from the boys who had older brothers. It wasn't just the cartoons with content that no three-year-old would understand or the toys that were geared for seven-year-olds, it was the new things that he wanted to do. Yesterday I came into the back yard to witness Devin, Alex and a friend "surfing" down the play set slide in their socks. Clearly this is another creative moment for the boys; they thought they were so cool!
Suddenly I realized that Alex is one of those kids at preschool. He was trying to hit a golf ball with a golf club at age one, he was watching Star Wars at age three, and he was surfing down the slide with two six-year-olds at age four. I remember wondering how those other parents could let their little guys lose their innocence so quickly and let their boys grow up so fast. I realize that they didn't have a choice. After all, there is nothing that brings out the ingenuity of a little boy like collaborating with another boy.