Rockies

The poll results are in. The majority of respondents are fat. All I'm going to say about that is stop eating so much. And one of you is a liar.

It was a cold October afternoon at the ball park. And windy too. I'm glad I took the time to layer Charlie. I had everything covered but his face and hands. He sat in his seat and didn't move except to turn his head occasionally in the direction of something novel; the concession man walking up the steep stairs with a tray of four dollar hot chocolates, a woman down below us chanting "Let's go Rockies", the enormous scoreboard with numbers and letters, the pop and crackle of fireworks and trash blowing in the air. At times, Charlie seemed more interested in watching the trash hover in the air over the diamond than the game.

This has been a milestone week for Charlie. Not only did he go to playschool composed on Tuesday, today also marks his second full day off the bottle. He's handled it remarkably well.

I picked him up from the church childcare this morning and I told him today was the day. On the way home I prepped him.

"We're going to go home and you are going to take a nap like a big boy and when you wake up we can go to the baseball game. Okay?"

I waited for him to say, "No way!" He says that now. It sounds more like a teenager's statement of disbelief than an adamant toddler's refusal. As in:

"Hey Charlie, your dad is cool!"

"No way!"

But he didn't. He looked out the window and fumbled with his car seat buckle. When he does that, I don't know what he's thinking.

I laid in him in bed. There was no fuss. I put his baseball glove on the nightstand so he could see it. Charlie rolled over on his stomach and lifted his head.

"We'll need to take this with us to the game in case we have to catch a ball. Be a good boy and go to sleep." I said pointing to the mitt. "Have good nap."

He said, "Nap," laid his head on his forearm and fell asleep.

After the game I told Jill about this.

She responded. "You mean we can tell him to go to sleep and he'll do it?"

So as I promised we went to Coors Field. Someone handed me a free ticket at the gate and then we climbed the tower of Babel to arrive at our seats only rows from the top in the upper deck behind home plate. The whipping wind made Charlie's eyes water the entire game. His hands were frozen. They felt like little ice packs. I sat him in my lap and put my arms around him to keep him warm. We sat like that for almost two hours, but he loved it. So did I.