Night Of Sharks

Written by Bob

For the last couple of months, I’ve wanted to take Matt to a Worcester Sharks minor league hockey game. He’s already attended a Worcester Tornadoes baseball game, a Providence Friars basketball game, and multiple New England Patriots practices, so a hockey game would complete the big four sports. With only two games left in the season, I happened to receive a “buy one get one ticket free” coupon for last Friday’s game, so I figured we’d check it out!

When we pulled into the parking garage, I didn’t have any cash as I assumed we’d be paying for parking on the way out, but I was wrong. I had to park in a handicap spot and we quickly ran across the street to the convenience store ATM to get cash. After that brief distraction, we walked over to the arena.

The first thing Matt noticed was the giant shark mascot named Finz. As I finished paying for our tickets, he ran over to see him but just at that moment, Finz was whisked away by security to head down to the ice for the start of the game, ruining our chance for a good photo opportunity. Matt didn’t take this diss personally, and later told me that Finz was his best friend and would be coming to his birthday party.

A visit to the souvenir stand resulted in another bobblehead being added to Matt’s collection. The bobblehead was of a player named Thomas, which Matt got a kick out, thinking I meant Thomas the Train. “No Dada, that’s not a Thomas bobblehead. I want a Percy bobblehead!”

After getting hot dogs, french fries, and pretzels, we finally made it to our seats for the start of the game. About 10 minutes in, Matt had finished all his food and decided he wanted M&M’s. Later, we would also have Reese’s Pieces and nachos. Although we got two tickets for the bargain price of $17, we more than made up for it with $50 in food!

During the first intermission, Matt was mesmerized by the zambonis, or “street sweepers” as he called them. They also flew around a remote control plane, dropping coupons to the crowd. I’m pretty sure intermission was Matt’s favorite part of the night.

During the second period, when the crowd was cheering, I told Matt he was allowed to yell as loud as he wanted at the game and didn’t have to use his inside voice. So, he stood up and at the top of his lungs shouted “When are the street sweepers coming back?!?”

Matt ended up making it to about halfway through the third period before he started to fade and we decided to go home. On the way out, he took a try at shooting hockey pucks in the lobby, but he swung the hockey stick high off the ground like his t-ball bat, and probably would have decapitated someone if we weren’t the only ones around.

When we got home, Matt wanted to stay up to tell Mom about his fun night when she got home from work at 10:30. “What did you guys do tonight?” she asked him, as I had only told her that I had planned a special father/son bonding event but didn’t provide details.

“There was a broken red light and Dada said to fix it,” Matt said, referring to a non-functioning crosswalk light we had encountered on our walk back to the parking garage. She kept asking what we did tonight and if he had fun, but he kept obsessing over the broken traffic light.

Although his favorite memories of his first hockey game involve zambonis/street sweepers and broken traffic lights, it was still an awesome night!

Spring Air

I love the transformation that our home makes with the change from winter to spring. Daffodils in a glass mason jar. Snow boots swapped out for rain boots. Pepper moved back outside. Pepper craning her neck to sniff each gentle spring breeze. Storm doors turned into screen doors.


Then of course there are the arts and craft projects. The springtime is my favorite time to break out the real messy ones because we can take them outside for quicker clean up and also for the reason that we don’t need to look further than the brilliant colors of nature to feel inspired.

Try as I may the mess doesn’t always stay outdoors. “I’m just washing the rocks a little,” Matthew says while standing at the bathroom sink, with a bowl full of rocks, water, and hand soap.

“The sink feels grimy,” Bob observes later that night and casts a suspicious glance my way. I shrug as though I can't fathom why it does.

Then this morning I sat outside in the fresh spring air, typing up this blog, sipping on a homemade smoothie (thanks  Bob!), and listening to Matthew play;

“I am a firefighter,” he declares and pulls on his clunky rain boots.. “Uh oh, I hear the bell ring!"

"I've got to get my boots on,” he takes off his boots and then puts them back on. Then he takes off down the stairs and running across the yard.

I just love the spring.

Beach Trip & Easter Weekend

“Do you like penguins?” Matt wants to know, making small chat as we pull into the parking lot of the beach. Since the start of the week the temperature has doubled in number making the weather perfect for the beach just in time for Easter weekend. We chose to go to Crane Beach, for the reasons that we have never been there before, and it was described online as picturesque and very clean.

The weather was not perfect enough to swim, or at least I thought so, but there were plenty of hardier New Englanders plunging themselves into the Atlantic like it was August and not April. Matthew got his clothes soaked twice, once by tripping when filling a bucket of water and a second time when playing soccer with Bob near the shoreline. The salty warm air dried his clothes both times, not that he minded much. It was as relaxing of a day as we had set out to have.

On a side note, Matthew would not forgive me if I didn’t mention one of his fondest memories of the trip; we saw a diesel train (commuter rail) pass us during the ride there.

The beach trip helped to lift our spirits as this had been a sad week for us. We had to say goodbye to Bob’s grandfather and namesake, Robert Rodak. To us he was “Tutu” the name Bob chose to call him as a baby. Tutu is one of the people I feel very lucky to have met in my lifetime. He still held the hand of his wife in public, even though they had been married for sixty years, and together they raised four children, one if which had special needs. Tutu was someone who never allowed others to think for him and formed his own fair opinions about things. I will always be grateful to him for being a strong influence in the type of husband and father Bob is today.

Our Easter was low key but enjoyable. We had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. We went out to breakfast and saw the Easter Bunny there at the restaurant.

Green, Clean, Earth

We hiked a nature trail, which promised to include the sights of a cranberry bog, but was really more so in the construction phase of making a cranberry bog. This made it all the more special to Matt.

“Look at that! An excavator. No, it’s a backhoe,” he analyzed each piece of yellow machinery with all the patience and attention to detail as a bird watcher.

We walked over small wooden bridges, passed turtles sunbathing on logs in the lake, and made up a game of stomping on top of crunchy sounding pine cones in order to distract Matt from picking up every one he saw.

Dinner that night was burgers, a hot dog for Matt, and fries on the bench of an outside mall. The stars had just started to come out as we finished eating.

We also hiked a trail at the Ecotarium. We ate lunch on a dock near a waterfall while fish swan below us in the shallow waters. It would have been more Zen like if I had not come along.
 

 I was so worried the whole time that he would fall into the slimy fish water. While Bob and Matt fed leftover bread crusts and counted the fish together, I paced.

Finally, when the boys had their fill of fish we continued to walk the rest of the trail. We saw caution signs about fragile ecosystems and open waters. We stopped at a Japanese-style water pavilion and Matt threw rocks into the water.It was an enjoyable weekend in the outdoors.

Vermont Winter Weekend Part 2

"No, No, No!” Matthew greeted the notion of swimming with Sarah and I. He squirms while I put on his bathing suit and shirt.

“I’m staying home,” he says planting his (bare) feet firmly on the ground while I put on our jackets.

“Will you come to keep us company?” I ask him.

“I don’t like swimming.”

“Suit yourself,” I shrug. For a moment I worry that he will call my bluff of leaving without him, but in the end he follows us out the door.

“I'll just watch," he concedes.

At the pool there are windows peeking out to the night sky and a number of toys floating in the water. I buckle Matt in a swim vest and he sits on the edge of the pool tossing a ball back and forth with us. A little while later he moves to the top stair to sit and play with a plastic airplane.

“Want to come for a little swim,” I coax holding my arms open. He grabs a hold of me so tightly that my skin under his fingers starts to turn white. Not letting go I guide him to the direction of Sarah who grabs hold of him before I let go. It’s no wonder he doesn’t like to swim. He lacks the natural instinct to stay afloat. When I loosen my hold he simply accepts the fact he is sinking, flailing his arms and legs in such a way that is much harder than swimming.

Matthew enjoyed the rest of the time in the pool, just as long as he was holding on to the side or in the arms or Sarah and I. We stayed in the water until I noticed that his teeth were chattering and it was time to go.



After dinner that evening he wanted to go to bed, but first wanted to make a tent to sleep in. He also felt the need to made snow angels on the white carpeted bedroom floor.

“Want to talk about trains with me?” he asked when I had settled into bed.

And then I am not sure what happened because I fell asleep first.

Vermont Winter Weekend Part 1

“I’m not in my own bed!” Matthew wakes up startled before the sun is up.

“We are in Vermont,” I remind him.

“Are we going home in the morning?” he asks.

“I think we will stay for a couple days,” I whisper, thinking of the three hour drive we made here some hours ago.

“Oh, okay,” he yawns deeply and then drifts back off to sleep.

Later that morning we ate a delicious pancake breakfast made by Sarah, our hostess with the mostess for the weekend. Then we drove, over a covered bridge, and on muddy roads to Sugarbush Farms.

Sugarbush Farms is a cheese lover’s paradise. Their slogan is “At the end of a scenic Vermont road lies a cheese lover’s paradise” if you don’t take my word for it. We walked
a nature trail and saw how maple trees were tapped and we visited the sugar house and saw how maple syrup was made. The highlight of the trip, in our opinion, was the actual tasting of the cheese and maple syrups. The instructor was very kind and gracious with her time and samples. No one minded that Matt played with all the cows and tractors in the toy shop, in fact they went as far to assure me that it was what all the kids who visited did. Plus there was Max, a nine-year-old loveable black lab lying in the middle of things soaking up the attention from a very smitten almost three-year-old.

Next we did a little shopping around Woodstock.We saw more dogs, some even inside the stores.

Matthew chose toe to take his afternoon nap on the floor of our guest room camp out style and gave the bed to a stuffed bear. I assured him that more adventures await him for when he wakes up.

Preschool Visit

“My toes hurt,” Matt announces inside the car. 

“Have you seen my dog? Where is my dog?” Matthew has solved his toe problems by removing his shoes and putting his socks on his hands as puppets. That is probably the second funniest thing he has done on a grocery shopping trip. The first would be when after we thought for one heart stopping moment that we lost him, but then spotted him hiding on the bottom shelf of the paper towels.

We are on our way to check out a preschool. Matthew is very excited about school. He knows that his favorite storybook characters all go to school as well as his two best friends at daycare. “We are going to school to get shots!” he cheers. He also knows that the only two times he has been inside of a school has been to get H1N1 vaccines.

The preschool is set up exactly the way that I hoped it would be. Cubbies with names assigned to them, art smocks hung up on the wall, toys organized by category, small tables with colorful chairs, and full book shelves low enough for children to reach and read. Matt made a beeline for the train table, where he stayed while the adults chatted and asked questions.

The teacher told us about the classroom size, rates, daily activities, and showed us the school yard with a big fenced in playground. The school was everything we were looking for and as an added bonus close enough to our home that we could bike ride there on the warmer days. When it was time to go Matthew didn’t want to leave. Already he can’t wait to start school in the fall.