Reality.

I feel silly writing too much personal information on this blog, mainly because I assume no one but my mother is really even reading this. But back when I started the blog, before Theo was born, I think the idea was to chronicle his life. For him. For us. And for anyone who wants to come along for the ride. That’s an easy, breezy fun little task when life is easy, breezy and fun. Then things get heavy, and people get sick, and marriages fall apart, and little boys have trouble behaving in school and chronicling life seems a lot harder because it’s more fun to post pictures reflecting a seamless childhood facilitated by two well-adjusted parents. We don’t have a lot of those pictures…

So I avoid the blog for months at a time because life gets complicated for months at a time. But maybe the new approach should be to just tell the truth – novel concept for me – and let the 4 people reading this blog know how life in Weymouth is unfolding. Ups and downs.

And there are lots of both.

The ups:

Theo is awesome. He is starting to read and his teacher goes on and on about how smart he is and how he tests off the charts and so on (this may sound annoying and boastful and self-congratulatory but believe me, when I get to the “downs” you’ll see why I have to really accentuate the positive.) He is learning to play chess and takes lessons every Sunday morning with our friend Michael – sometimes Theo goes to chess matches at the local library and plays other kids and sometimes…he wins! He even played my dad on Thanksgiving and Grandpa was very impressed with Theo’s knowledge of the game.

Also a success is Theo’s swimming. Theo had been taking group lessons forever and was really struggling with putting his head in the water, swimming on his own, etc. So we signed him up for private lessons with Catherine – a rare bird who lives a few towns over. The pool is attached to her house (!) and she is hilarious and sarcastic and pushes Theo hard and I am happy to report that, at long last, he is swimming on his own. The Wednesdays we go to her house are really my favorite days of the week because it’s warm and cozy there, I like the smell of chlorine, and I can see Theo’s trust and confidence growing exponentially when he learns something new. We laugh and clap and cheer when he jumps in the deep end and then we go home and have pizza. Best day of the week by far.

Theo also takes gymnastics but he goes on a day when I work late so his grandmother takes him. I don’t ever really get to see what he’s doing there and can’t get a thing out of him about it so I have little to report other than he goes without a fight which is the best I can ask for.

Here is a photo of Theo with Catherine:

So those are a few ups. Must get back to work.

To be continued.