This Seems Familiar...

To get the boys out of the house after their sugar coma and before a birthday party I had to go to, I took them to Shaker Lakes. The afternoon was beautiful and pretty warm considering the temperatures earlier in the week. No winter coats necessary. Aleks wanted to go to "the river." Immediately he started walking on rocks that were not much at all like stepping stones and which sat in a rather large pool of water. He made it out okay (with a couple of close calls), but Bastian of course then wanted to do the same. I convinced him to go over a bridge to a shoreline with a bit of rocky shore instead of the deep pool with island rocks, but he was intent on finding stepping stones. They found some, but neither son did very well at staying dry, particularly Bastian who almost instantly got deep enough to have water go inside his rain boots.

He then began walking down the center of the stream. Soon enough, he was waist deep. He discovered a large rock under the water and pointed out that he'd found a rock to stand on at last. He lacked any apparent concern for the fact that his rock required him standing uneasily several feet from me in a pool of freezing creek water at least 18 inches deep, wet to his navel. I got out the camera to snap the following picture just before he wandered off across the creek to a deeper pool, where he fell a bit, landing him neck deep in cold, cold water, which took his breath away. He managed to crawl/climb back to me where I dragged him out of the water and hurried both boys along the path (which we had to unfortunately backtrack to get to) back to the car. There I turned the heat on, stripped him down naked half in the car/half in the parking lot, dried him off with my keffiyeh, then dressed him with extra clothes I keep in the trunk.

It's all so familiar...