Fare thee Well 515 Putnam

It is over. The final documents were signed at 10 a.m. this morning. We were cleaning and making final preparations until 2 a.m. I am tired. I am nostalgic.

Our first home. Sitting on the floor watching the ALCS before we had any furniture. Maddie dancing to "This Old Man." Train tracks around the coffee table.

515 Putnam, we have outgrown you, but you will be missed.

Caleb-ese II

An axe in it = not on purpose
Popsipah dick = popsicle stick
Peanuts = um, let's just say he's fond of pointing out that Maddie doesn't have any
Baby's OK = I just hit Henry

Yippie

NFL training camps start this week! Kid in a candy store. Oh, and my kids are fine, thanks for asking.

Rules

I'm not really sure how this came to pass but Caleb and I now sleep together on a mattress on the floor of his bedroom. No decision was made in favor of this arrangement. Somehow it just came to be. He occupies 75% of the mattress and the pillow. I get about seven inches of bed and a pair of old jeans to rest my head.

"Daddy," he whispers at 6 a.m. with alarm clock precision. "Watch a show." And thus my day begins. There is more negotiating than I had anticipated...and wrestling...and discussion of bodily functions. When Maddie wakes up, I become referee of a game in which I don't know the rules.

That has to be a foul, Time out.

"Can I come out yet?"

I don't know. "No, that's a two-minute foul."

"Why?"

I DON'T KNOW. Geeze, what's with these kids.

Stars of the Show

This morning I took the kids to the Independence Day Parade at Boston City Hall Plaza. The crowd of maybe two thousand, mostly foreign tourists, stared with befuddled curiosity as Mayor "Mumbles" Menino spoke near-coherent sentence-like utterances. He announced the Army...a whisper in his ear...he meant Navy Color Guard. I leaned to my foreign co-bystander: "Don't worry, I can't understand anything either."

Caleb, for his part, was eagerly waving his mini US flag. Aforementioned co-bystander got the idea to photograph my posterity for theirs. Then it went viral and I stood by as dozens made "click, click" of my son.

Next stop: The reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Old State House, site of the Delcaration's first declaration. I was near the front with a crowd of hundreds squeezing in on me from all sides.

The reading began and, on cue, so did Maddie: "TAKE ME HOME! TAKE ME HOME NOW!" I looked around and saw no escape through the tightly packed crowd. I stepped back: "Who's the idiot who brought kids to this?"