One of the things we did for James for father’s day was make superman t-shirts. One for daddy (SuperDaddy!), one for Ethan (SuperBoy!) and one for Jocelyn (SuperGirl!).

Ethan didn’t want to wear his on Father’s day, but Jocelyn was more than game. A shot of SuperDAddy and SuperGirl at SuperSweetWaterTavern where the supers get their Father’s day sustenance (not to mention beer).

I also made a print of this image and framed it for James:

It was a nice father’s day, even though near the end I did have to say to James, “I realize it’s father’s day and I should be watching the kids so you can relax and all, but you may have to step in in order to keep me from strangling them.”

In other news, summer camp is in it’s first week, which means lots of fun activities for the kids at school. Ethan usually goes somewhere for a specific activity (bowling, pool, mini golf) in a school van in the morning, and then comes back in the afternoon more open playtime. He is also allowed to take his Nintendo DS to school (which wasn’t allowed during the school year by us or the school) and he usually is playing it when I pick him up.

Wednesday as I was tucking him in to bed, he said, “My neck hurts.” Now, James has been sick for the last three days so I immediately checked his forehead for any signs of fever and felt his glands. All fine.

“Is it inside your neck, like your throat? Or more on the outside, like your muscles?”

“It’s on the outside.”

Hmm. I told him he’d feel better in the morning and left it at that.

Yesterday when I picked him up at school, again, he was playing his DS. I tore him away so he could you know, say Hi or give me a hug or something, and noticed his eyes were red-rimmed and somewhat bloodshot. Suddenly I realized what his “sore neck” was from.

“How long did you play your DS today?” I asked him on the way home.
“A LONG time,” he answered.

We have a gamer-boy on our hands, who has strained neck muscles from hunching over and bloodshot eyes from peering at the screen for who knows how many hours a day.

I told him when we got home, the DS was done for the day. I also stressed the importance of taking BREAKS and that there were LOTS of OTHER things he could do at summer camp, he didn’t have to JUST play his DS all afternoon. I also talked to one of the counselors and asked her to maybe encourage him to do some other things this afternoon. We’ll see.

Gamer-boy.

I waited to relate this until I had the pictures taken and off the camera and uploaded. Yay!

We had a lovely father’s day. The kids got up and snuck downstairs while James and I slept in a bit. I must say, this is the nicest part about them getting a bit older. When they started making a bit of a racket, I got up and went downstairs with them so daddy could sleep in.

We got out the present we had gotten for James and got to work. I mixed up some concret, poured it in the mold, and then the kids got busy sticking glass bead-like things in it, making hand impressions, and trying very hard to distract me so that they could do letter stamps all over the place willy nilly. I, however, used my mom-powers to not get distracted and kept all the words as actual words.

The resulting garden stepping stone turned out quite nicely.

I am pretty unoriginal, as this is the same thing we did for Father’s Day 2 years ago. I’m glad I got a fancier kit this time, because in the other one, we had to just scratch the letters into the concret with a toothpick and it really didn’t look that great. We had to embellish everything with paint.

I don’t mind that it’s unoriginal and now we have 2 because look at those handprints! We’ll want those later! Too cute!

So we made the stepping stone and set it in a safe place to set for 2 days. After we let James sleep in, we brought him breakfast in bed (poptarts and coke) and all the homemade cards and pictures the kids had made in school.

The sweetest part of the day was after I shooed the kids from basically jumping on Daddy, he turned to me, his eyes moist and said, “I’m so happy we have them. I love being a daddy. They make me so happy.”

We spent the rest of the day poking around at the Potomac mall (legos for ethan, new shoes for jocelyn) and then came home to launch teeeny tiny rockets at a nearby soccer field.

Everyone had a great day.

Thanks for being such a great daddy, James. I love you.

-amy