Plans Set In… Clay?

I’m the kind of guy who likes having things planned out. I’m not very good at “just winging it.” Still, if fatherhood has taught me anything it’s that you always need to be flexible and plans are never set in stone. You never know when a little one will get a cold and shatter your perfectly formed plan.

Take this weekend, for example. I had a great Father’s Day in mind as the weekend approached. We would wake up early and go strawberry picking. For dinner, we would go a great, local Chinese restaurant. On Saturday, we went to the Great Escape (more on that later). Coming home, it was late and JSL fell asleep. Then we stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts for a very late dinner and he woke up… and stayed up until midnight! Then, he woke us up at 4:40am to come into our bed just as a huge thunderstorm erupted. There, he hogged bed space until 6am when his big brother woke up.

I set NHL up on the couch with the Roku remote to be entertained by Rugrats on Netflix until we were all more rested. Then, I fell back to an uneven sleep-wake up cycle until B left the bed. I laid in bed with my eyes closed knowing what was coming up and yet savoring my last moments of lying down before beginning the day.

B and the boys came in and all wished me a happy Father’s Day, gave me some cards and presents. I got a Star Wars “book” (it’s a series of cards connected at one point so they can swivel around). I’ll use these while watching Star Wars with NHL. I also got some pajama bottoms and a coupon book from NHL (good for vacuuming, doing the dishes, and learning about computers with me).

After getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast and checking our house for damage/leaks from the previous night’s storm (nothing, thank goodness), we talked about our Father’s Day plans. I really wanted to go strawberry picking, but my trip outside showed me two things. First of all, it was hot and humid. Secondly, it was muddy out. Having the boys walk through hot, muddy fields to get a ton of berries was probably not the best idea. (Especially when I would be the one tubbing them that night!)

NHL was actually the one to suggest an alternative plan. He said we could go bowling. Most lanes seemed to be closed on Sundays, but we found one that wasn’t. Before bowling, though, we needed to eat lunch. The place I had wanted to go to was completely out of the way, so we did what we’ve learned to do since becomming parents, adapted our plans to the situation. We went out to a local chinese buffet and had a pretty good lunch. NHL even tried two new things (black bean buns and edamame) and loved them.

We went bowling and, while I’ll post details later, we all had a great time. After bowling, we stopped by BJ’s to pick up some things and went to B’s parents’ house for dinner.

Father’s Day turned out to be a lot of fun even if none of my planned activities got accomplished. That’s life and parenting, though. You can either learn to roll with the punches and have fun with the new plans or you gripe about your messed up plans and miss all the fun that it happening right in front of you.

P.S. Even this blog post was a “roll with the punches” thing. I originally intended to post about Six Flags or bowling with photos, but realized I had uploaded the wrong set of photos. So I needed to post about something else until I get to the photos on my computer at home.