Sunday, March 30: My three-old-son Joshua and I had quite a weekend. I got in super late on Friday night from the Midwest, where I had been speaking in Illinois and Missouri. Saturday was a warm one in South Florida, so I went swimming in the backyard pool with Joshua. I wouldn’t call him a swimmer yet, and he’s not much of a daredevil around the pool. In fact, he fell into the deep end last year and was traumatized by the experience, so we haven’t had to worry about him playing in that end of the pool.
I thought it would be a good time to try out the deep end again because sooner or later he’s going to learn how to swim. I made sure his arms had his little floaters and then I held him as we jumped into the deep end. I let him hold the pool edge and then took him out into deeper waters. He did well, and I think progress was made.
I whipped up homemade piña colada ice cream on Saturday morning, which was our after-dinner treat. There is never enough for Joshua because he loves my ice cream. That’s why he announced that he wasn’t going to share. “This is all for me,” he said, cradling the container of ice cream that came out of the freezer. Well, we had to work that out in short order and learn a little lesson in sharing.
This afternoon, we were invited to a children’s birthday party where a “bounce house” was set up in the backyard. It’s one of those inflatable “houses” with a slide, and the kids get in there and go crazy, flinging themselves into the air and into each other. I was worried that Joshua was going to get an elbow to the nose, but he was the one throwing himself at others. In fact, he got into this game with a 12-year-old boy where he tried to tackle him and wouldn’t let go of his leg. My son is like a machine. He won’t stop doing something he likes unless you pry him away, so I had to tell him to cut it out.
Then one of the adult men, who was built like a fullback on the New England Patriots, dove into the bounce house, which caused all the girls to shriek and the boys to go crazy again, flinging themselves at each other. Joshua must have been in that bounce house for more than two hours.
I put a shirt on the little guy midway through, but when the party was all over, Joshua’s tummy was as red as a St. Louis Cardinal jersey. Once he saw how “burned” he was from rubbing on the plastic bounce house, he started screaming out in pain. My son was in agony from the major rug-like burn.
When we got him home, I cut a large leaf off one the aloe plants in a backyard pot and filleted the leaf to get to the aloe. Then I rubbed the fresh aloe on his burned tummy, which looked like it was going to blister. Rubbing aloe on burns is a homeopathic remedy that I learned at a young age. In fact, I’ll never forget what happened to me when I was a little younger than Joshua. It’s an incredible story, and because it’s rather long, I’m going to save it for my posting tomorrow.
One last thing I have to tell you about the kiddie’s birthday party: Samuel and Alexis, our infants, were wonderful. Everyone was fighting over who could hold because they were so good and smiley.