Last Day of Summer

OK, so it's not officially the last day of summer. But tomorrow our boy starts first grade, so it sure feels like it.

We carpe'ed the diem by taking a family outing to beautiful Doty Park, where Auntie K. kept our girl busy on the monkey bars and by the lake and my beloved and I kept our boy busy by having him chase tennis balls while we battled it out on the court. (We petered out after two partial sets dominated by Beloved: 5-1, 4-2.)

During the course of play, I could see that our little guy was getting pretty hot. He had dressed himself in a long-sleeved t-shirt (there was a previous post on this), and he was running A LOT. (My forehand's pretty bad about half the time.)

"Do you want to take off your t-shirt?" I asked him.

"Not in a public park, Mommy," he said, taken aback by the suggestion.

"It's OK for boys to take their shirts off, honey," I said.

"Well, that's OK. I don't want to," he said.

A while later, he had gotten hotter and was sitting on a park bench beside the court. He looked over at me and said, "I want to take my shirt off now, Mommy."

"That's fine," I said. "Go ahead."

When I glanced over after the next volley, he was still seated on the park bench. He was indeed shirtless, but he had his t-shirt draped over his tummy so less than half his torso was showing.

After reading in the paper this week about how local school districts enforce their dress codes (kids refer to the "Three Bs" rule: no bellies, breasts, or boxers), I'm quite happy to have such a modest child headed back to school.