Today Michael and I were playing with his crawling tubes; long fabric-covered wire spirals that he can connect together and crawl through.
My job is simple: I sit on the couch and hold up one end of a tube. Every so often he’ll pop out of that end and relay some important fact, such as that he spied a dust bunny, or that it’s dark, or that his band-aid is coming off.
For some reason he started calling me “captain.” I think it’s because we happened to catch the tail end of “Titanic” which was showing this weekend. I tried to explain what was going on, and he was interested in it for about four and a half minutes, and then he was crawling through the tubes again, calling out “Captain?” from time to time.
I decided that if I was going to be captain, then he was going to be the lieutenant. We had very important tasks to accomplish.
“Captain?”
“Yes, lieutenant.”
“Uh, I think you need to close the hatch.”
“Aye-aye, lieutenant,” I said, and put the large square pillow over the end of the tube.
A few second later:
“Captain! Captain!”
“Yes, lieutenant?”
“I have to go poo!”
“Make it so, lieutenant!”
It was most vital occupation. And it went on for a good hour, rescuing stuffed dogs, tossing a cardboard drink carrier into the fireplace, extracting crumbs and bits of errant bark from the tubes.
As it approached nap time, I watched the clock to give Michael the heads-up warning before getting him ready to head off to bed.
From the depths of the tubes, his final call came:
“Captain?”
“Yes, lieutenant?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, lieutenant.”
That will go down as one of the strangest sentences I’ll ever utter in my lifetime. Parenting is full of those.
Awwwww, that is the best playdate ever!
awww, we love you too captain
That is the very essence of parenting, those sweet little weird moments that mean nothing and everything. Write it all down so you can hold it in your hand just a little while longer.
@Weaselmomma – yes, it is. Makes worthwhile all the times he made me pull a muscle trying to extract him from the tubes.
@nonna – I’m blushing now!
@Antique Mommy – Yup! That’s why I write. I know it’s fleeting. My older kids turned into teenagers while I wasn’t looking.
I LOVE that you posted about this right after, well, that other one.
It’s good to have the two experiences close together.
Melisa – just an odd coincidence, really… but such is life. Lots of random ups and downs all smushed together.
That was a great exchange Tom. I imagined each Captain and Lieutenant was spoken with authority, kinda like in the movie Mr. Roberts. Do you know that movie? I digress.
Thanks for sharing this Tom. Parenting is full of these moments. The ones that keep us looking forward to the next time.
Have a great week!
Wow. You sure have your crew in ship-shape! I once got an announcement of “Torpedo away” after the fact. I like your method much better. No swabbing the decks afterward.
He’s learning. Sometimes he forgets to stow the mop and bucket though.