Par

Stop me if you've heard this already: Zach is beginning to enjoy "grown-up" time in the bathroom. He strips himself down, completely naked, then stands in front of the toilet for as long as 30 minutes at a time, waiting for something to happen. I'm not sure if anything happens or not because he flushes multiple times while standing there, so who knows? The point is that he has the intent, the determination, and the enthusiasm to do what he needs to do. (That little strangling noise you hear is the figurative sound of Teenaged Zach reading this and dying from complete and utter mortification.)

Luke is quite the little personality study. Here is a guy, for instance, who has only a marginal amount of enthusiasm for riding a bike, but who would happily spend an hour taking apart and putting back together his bike bell. So you can understand why I seized the opportunity to sign him up for an after-school science enrichment class. But who knew - the class is centered around a "detective" theme and for this week they asked the kids to dress up in spy gear (trench coats, sunglasses, hats, etc.). Few things are more abhorrent to Luke than the idea of dressing up in a costume (except for one night of the year on Halloween when large amounts of candy are involved) or performing any kind of unnecessary clothing change, so he begged me to switch him to a golf class that is running at the same time.

Golf? Yeah, turns out he got a little intrigued when he heard Dave make some reference to Tiger Woods having made a billion dollars playing golf. A million, a billion - soon you're talking about a lot of Lego sets. He also played a round of miniature golf last week, and it convinced him that it was definitely a sport worth pursuing. So he did the little golf class today, reported back that it was pretty good, and is preparing for his new career. Tonight when I was tucking him in I told him that my grandmother loved golf and one time won a special prize for getting a hole in one. What was the special prize, he wanted to know. Ummmm.... Anyone? I think it was a free meal at the clubhouse. So, OK, even if there's not a billion dollars, there might someday be a free lunch in it for him.