The dream continues

The dream continues. Within the first hour of us arriving back in town, the boys and I went out—me for a jog, them for a bike ride.  It was deliciously wonderful.  This is exactly what I always wanted when I would imagine raising kids.  AND I’ve always wanted someone to run with.  Oskar is still learning everything so sometimes I would need to jog pretty slowly but he will come along.  I am doing my best to train him to ride further to the outside of the road than I’m running; it’s a learning environment when one discovers how little kids comprehend about the workings of the world

Maxim was having fun making skid marks and predictably had a mishap. I came up to him, brushed off the knee—“A little ground in dirt.  No problem.  A milestone of life.” 
 “Do you know what milestone means, Maxim?”
 “No.”
 “It means this is a hallmark—something that is a signpost, a major event that everyone goes through.”  I could see out of the corner of my eye that he wasn’t impressed.  “Doesn’t make it hurt any less when I say that though, huh?”
 “No.”  He got back on the bike and it must have been a bit of genuine hurt—5 minutes later he was limping.  Six minutes, no.

We ran through some minor streets, not hard to find in a town of 4000, and near a softball field where girls were warming up for a game.  This is where I did my pull-ups.  Maxim was enthralled by the softball practice.  Would you like to do that someday, Maxim?  Would you like to come down and watch a game someday?  He’s ready for everything.  Imagine, a couple Iowa boys who have never played a moment of baseball.  There are ball fields littering the town like gemstones. The location of our house is fantastic…right in the middle of them all. 

I was running mostly slowly with the boys, I stopped a few times, but I did do a 6 minute run in the middle with a 60-second sprint.  When we got around to home, I arranged it so I would be running the final sprint.  I must have had some energy built up because I beat the record—completely unexpectedly—by .05%.  I didn’t feel like I was going that fast.  My mind wasn’t on the run—but on a myriad of other distractions from the whether the boys were keeping to the side of the road to the black clouds overhead.  I didn’t do badly, though.  Oskar said, “You were running so fast, Papa!  I was pedaling and zooming!  So much I didn’t even have to pedal! (his first experience with momentum and coasting, I guess)  But I still couldn’t reach you.”

Afterwards, we all road our bikes over to a co-worker’s house to see her rabbit; then to see their day-care place, then to see the cats and the garden.  Small towns are great.