The plan for last week was to simply have fun with our friends at their cottage, just off the lake. We had no itinerary to follow, except to feed the boys on a somewhat regular schedule. I hoped to get Tyler excited about tubing and to have A- drag him around the lake with his boat. We succeeded in getting Ty excited about the idea of tubing, but not so much on the action of tubing.

While B- (the son of A- and M-) enjoyed his kid-safe low-speed tubing ride, we asked Ty if he would like to go tubing after B-.

“Ohhh yes. Tyler turn next.”

However, as we lifted Ty and lowered him in the tube, now held firmly at the side of the boat by M-, he had a change of heart.

“I all done.”

Against his wishes, I placed Ty into the tube anyway. We all preached our oooohs and ahhhs for three or four seconds, then pulled Ty back into the boat. After telling him that I’d keep him safe and that he did a great job, I hopped into the tube. A- whipped me around the lake, and eventually the laws of physics caught up, throwing me into the water. A- took his turn then the kiddos went again. Ty never built up the courage to actually go tubing, and we didn’t pressure him.

Two days later, while playing at the beach area, I placed Ty in the tube and walked next to him with it, in the waist high water. We ventured out a little further – to the boat docks – where we saw M- and B- in a paddleboat. I hopped in the back and held onto the rope so they could tow the tube a few feet from the boat.

Ty loved it.

The next day, we all took the paddleboat out again (sans A-, because he had to work that morning). Two adults sat up front paddling and one sat in the back to make sure the tubing was going fine. Ty and B- really had a great time. We weren’t quite at the speed B- was accustomed to, but he certainly seemed to enjoy himself. While Ty was in the tube, I slowly let the rope out until he was fifteen to twenty feet out.

I won’t mention that Sarah and M- spent way more time paddling than I did. However, I will mention that this outing was one of the very few times that I didn’t take my camera with me. It’s a good thing though, because the paddleboat took on water. The camera wouldn’t have survived. But, you need not worry, because I took over two thousand pictures last week. I’ve whittled them down to just over seven hundred, so as to not overwhelm everyone with frame-by-frame shots of me awkwardly slalom skiing.

Hopefully we can get Ty to do some tubing behind A-’s boat next time.

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