Max Weathers The Storm And Fires Back

Max didn't prove to fare too badly with the sickness. For a while he wasn't eating, and he has had diarrhea, but has not thrown up since the first time. He said many times that he was scared of spitting up and he told me that "he had to leave the room" when Emmett was sick and throwing up. I think that may have been a big part of his not eating. I thought he seemed to be looking at food with relish. He was just scared to eat it. We had spaghetti for dinner that night and he said he wished he could eat spaghetti too (it is one of his favorites.) In retrospect I feel a little bad about not having let him have some then, but we were being cautious. I'm not sure he would have eaten it anyway. In any case, Sunday, for lunch, after he first ate some cinamon toast without incident, I heated up the leftover spaghetti for him. He didn't hesitate this time. I think it's safe to say that he relished the meal. He wanted more after it was all gone.

He was very active all day. We played several rounds of Buzz Lightyear (I was Zerg for a while and later I was XR) and Max and Emmett played quite a bit with their trains. Mom-Mom - you would have been proud of the track I built in part with the blue track expansion set you gave Max. It was, I must say, a very fine achievement. I took a picture of it because, well, I had to of course. I don't have the picture here or I'd post it now.

In those Buzz Lightyear games there is a distressing amount of shooting going on, but I try to remember that I played all these shooting games when I was kid too, and look at me now. Moreover, it's hard to tell your kid to say no to guns, when, for example, you get a kick out of the shooting galleries at amusement parks. Especially the one at the incredible Knoebels Grove Amusement Park in Pennsylvania, which isn't one of those light-gun things, it's the real thing: air powered bb guns you use to shoot moving metal "ducks" and other targets. There's something really satisfying about the "PING!" of a downed metal duck. We balked, however, when in seeing that scene from our old Ocean City video when they are riding the politcally incorrect airplanes, Max said, "I didn't like guns then. Now I like guns." If we go to Knoebels, should we steer Max and Emmett away from that shooting gallery? I'll want to play it, of course. Indeed, no trip to Knoebels seems complete without it, but I'll take your suggestions.