After You Change My Diaper, Can I Borrow The Car?

Kids always seem to develop in sudden bursts. One day they’re crawling or rolling around on the floor, the next, they’re taking steps and by the end of the day they’re climbing up your workbench to reach your power drill.

My kids have had plenty of these moments. Talking, walking and reading all emerged in bright shining moments of epiphany that snowballed quickly. The latest skill to go from a get the camera out event to second nature was swimming.

At the beginning of the summer, my sons would not put their heads under water. Within a week of setting up our pool on Fourth of July weekend, they tried it. Now, they don’t seem to hear anything I say because their heads are constantly under water as they breathe through snorkels. (And during an I told you so parental moment, I explained to them that if they had listened to me a few months ago, they could have seen coral and tropical fish instead of the blue dolphin pattern on the bottom of the pool liner.)

While this is more of a getting over your fears than a brain forming during infancy development, these things still seem to happen quickly, even as your kids get older. It makes you look back and feel like it was just yesterday that going to the bathroom for them involved standing in the corner and making a scrunchy face. Their amazing reate of progression is made more noticeable by the fact that they sometimes do things at 6 and 7 that I didn't do until I was in my mid-twenties, like picking up live bait with their bare hands.

You’re amazed at the things that they somehow learned to do without your direct supervision. A multi-syllable word gets thrown out or a baseball gets caught with minimal effort and you blink and stare in wonder.

“Is that my kid? Have I been asleep for several years? What else have I missed? Who is the president? Please tell me we’re not having Soilent Green for dinner!”

This also makes me a little more understanding of the sentiment behind why my parents still want to tell me to get a haircut or not drink even a single beer at a restaurant because I’ll be driving home in three hours. As a parent I think you focus so intently on your kids while they are babies, changing diapers, feeding, reading to them and resisting the temptation to poke the soft spot on their heads, that when they start to fend for themselves, you let your guard down a little. The next thing you know, they went and grew up behind your back, the little sneaks.

It frightens you a little because you feel like you missed something. My wife always asks my sons where their growing button is located so that she can turn it off for awhile. Personally, when my sons have these sudden big boy moments, I feel like I need to quit my job and stay home with a video camera focused on them.

But instead I usually end up drinking myself to sleep and listening to Cat's In The Cradle on a constant loop.

Don’t worry, mom, I’m not driving anywhere afterward.