Until yesterday, Elijah had two pairs of shoes in rotation: some blue Crocs that were too small, and a pair of orange Crocs that were a little too big, causing him to trip and skin his knees a lot. Also, he got blisters from them. For those of you who don't know, Crocs--rubber closed-toe sandals with little air holes dotting the top of the shoe--are the de rigeur preschool footwear of the moment. They are, I believe, Scandanavian in origin. If they're not, they probably should be. Anyway, Elijah was complaining, and he doesn't need any more reasons to complain. It was time for his fall shoes.

Regina took him to the mall yesterday. She returned with a pair of navy-blue Pumas that looked just as comfortable as anything I own. Apparently, he'd tried on the exact same pair at a different store an hour before she bought these, claiming that the first pair made him uncomfortable, though we later found out that was because the saleslady made him wear itchy socks. Good lord. Anyway, he liked this pair, claiming they gave him the power to "run really really fast, faster than all the people in the world, and Hot Man."

Morning came. Regina woke up with Elijah. I slept an hour longer, getting up in time to drive him to school. As I staggered about the house, trying to find clean clothes, I heard this from the living room:

"NEAL! I need your help! NOW!"

Really, I should just wake up every morning by having a teakettle full of boiling water poured on myself. It would be easier.

Regina was in the living room, wrangling the boy, who was sobbing relentlessly, refusing to put on his shoes.

"He says he doesn't like the loops," she said. "I am so sick of this crap."

"The loops scare me," Elijah sobbed.

"They're not scary," said Regina. "They're shoelaces!"

We left him there and went into the kitchen to quietly confer

"He's doing this to spite me, you know," she said.

"No," I said. "He's just kind of crazy."

"NO SHOES WITH LOOPS!" Elijah said from the other room, proving my point.

"I can't take this anymore," said the wife. "You get him to put on the shoes."

She stormed away. I went into the living room and said, "Elijah, if you don't wear these shoes, I'm going to make you eat them."

He snuffled, and then smiled.

"People don't eat shoes," he said.

"They do if they're naughty."

When we arrived in the school parking lot, I said loudly, to anyone who could hear, "Hey there! Isn't Elijah wearing the most awesome shoes of all time?"

"Elijah, those are the coolest shoes ever," said his friend's mom.

Elijah started running around me in circles. And then he bolted across the parking lot, holding my hand. It was 9:15 AM, and I'd barely outsmarted a three-year-old. Sadly, that proved to be the highlight of my day.

Despite the chaotic atmosphere of Elijah's summer swim classes, which at times resembled the evacuation of Dunkirk led by Valley Girls in mirrored sunglasses, the boy still picked up a few skills. He had no problem noodling around under water for 20 seconds. He learned various floating positions, as well as how to monkey-crawl along the side of the pool, and he did something called his "doggie-kittie." This used to be known as doggie paddling, but I guess that's something else that's changed from my youth, along with little things such as the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet and that the brontosaurus is now called the apatosaurus.

But these pieces still didn't add up to swimming. I took it upon myself to close the gap. We had a pool at our disposal every day in Vancouver, so I gave Elijah instruction. I told him to do his "turtle float", his "Superman arms," and his "pancake float." This didn't help much. He'd launch himself off the steps, flail helplessly in a circle for a few seconds, and then grasp for my chest desperately, all the while grinning like an idiot underwater.

"You need to swim," I said.

"I am swimming," he said.

"Actually, you're drowning. It's creative drowning, but it's still drowning. And I don't want you to drown."

So here's what I told him: "Do your doggie-kitties. And kick while you're doing them. Swim in a straight line. And if you run out of breath, lift your head out of the water."

On our last day of vacation, he spread his arms, and glided beautifully off the top step, and then starting moving his arms in a perfect crawl, while kicking his legs. When he reached me, I said,

"Do you realize what you're doing?"

"What?"

"You're swimming!"

"I am?"

"Yes. How did you do that?"

"Because I did what you told me."

"You mean you were actually listening?"

"Uh-huh."

Since we got home, I've taken Elijah swimming twice, once on Labor Day to our neighborhood pool, and once to the aquatic center where he took his lessons. He now systematically swims several feet from the side of the pool into my arms, and then back to the steps when I release him. Other times, I whip him around in a circle, let him go, he moves himself around underwater to locate me, and then swims back to my arms. He still hasn't figured out how to lift his head out of the water to take a breath. But I trust that will evolve in time.

I've taught my son how to do something useful. It's really gratifying. Whenever I see him swim, I want to cry with pride. Still, I feel uncomfortable. Have I really done something right for once? It hardly seems possible.

The other day at school, Elijah's teacher showed the kids how to make pasta. It had some sort of chicken cream sauce. At dinner that night, the boy told us about the recipe.

"She made it with that thing that's like onion, but smaller," he said.

"You mean garlic?" Regina said.

"Uh-huh," Elijah said. "Garlic. And there was something called rosemary! It smelled really good!"

Now, I don't remember what I learned in preschool. Hell, I don't even remember what I watched on TV last night. But I'm pretty certain that I didn't learn about rosemary until after college. Still, it seems like a good lesson for my boy, who's showing uncommon taste in food.

Last night, Regina made pizza, using store-bought crust. One of the pizzas, at Elijah's request, had black olives, capers, and mozzarella. Regina deployed ground beef and fresh tomatoes onto the other one. Both, I decided, could stand improvement by way of the anchovy. It's probably my favorite condiment; to my mind, the truly best foods--bone marrow, pork cheeks, runny, aged cheese, and the anchovy--bear a taste and smell that's faintly redolent of ass. I really wanted to share my anchovy passion with my son.

I got the jar out of the fridge.

"What's that?" Elijah asked.

"It's anchovy," I said. "A really salty fish," making sure to emphasize the word "salty," a key buzzword sure to excite Elijah's salivary glands.

"Can I have one?"

"Sure."

I fished one out of the jar and flopped it on his plate.

"It's slimy!" he said.

"Eat it."

He did. His face scrunched up at first absorption, yet he didn't spit it out. I waited, anxiously, for the judgment to emerge.

"It's good," he said. "It's a little black and a little red. With spines."

And then he ate three more.

"Unbelievable," Regina said. "He won't eat grilled cheese or a scrambled egg, but he'll eat anchovies, capers, and black olives."

"And chicken skin," Elijah added.

"And chicken skin."

"And shrimp!"

"With the heads on," I said.

"Of course," Elijah said. "It's the yummiest part of the shrimp."

That little Guatemalan kid on Noggin had better watch his precious lispin' back.

We also went to Seattle on our trip, paying a little weekend visit to my cousin Michael, his wife Catherine, and their 14-month-ish old son. The boy appears to be a mild, happy, friendly child who gives them no out-of-the-ordinary trouble. They were about as prepared for Elijah as FEMA was for Hurricane Katrina.

By the time Michael took us on a hike in the mountains of Washington on Sunday, we'd managed to downgrade Elijah to a Tropical Storm. An hour or so up, we reached a picnic-perfect setting among a copse of trees. At this point, Elijah decided that Regina was sitting on his "favorite rock," which, of course, he'd never seen before and would never see again.

"It's my best place in the whole world and if I don't sit there I will be dead!" he said.

While Regina didn't actually give a crap about the rock in particular, she did give a crap about succumbing to the whims of a whiny child on the verge of his fourth birthday. She stood her ground. Elijah moaned, clawed at his face, and then, eventually, howled, filling the forest with his agony. The hurricane whipped up again.

"PLEASE, mama! I have to sit on that rock! Please, please, please?"

"No," she said.

"WHYYYYYYYYYYY?"

"Because I'm sitting here."

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

This went on for ten minutes, maybe more. Regina, a good Protestant girl, worried that we were disturbing the peace of the other hikers. I tried to imagine myself alone on a sandy beach, smoking a joint under partly cloudy 75-degree skies, and then alternately falling asleep and reading a good, pulpy novel.

"NOOOOOOOOO!" Elijah said.

Finally, the fever broke when Michael said, "Hey, Elijah."

"What?" Elijah sniffled.

"Let's take off our clothes and jump in the lake."

My cousin Michael is sophisticated and well-travelled. He builds his own boats and has patented some sort of revolutionary whale-tracking device. Still, it doesn't take much provocation to get him to skim down to his tidy-whities. Regina and I stayed at our picnic spot, proclaiming victory. Shortly, we heard this:

"WHAAAAAAAA!"

Elijah had suddenly turned gleeful. We hurried down. There he was, in Michael's arms, shivering and naked while getting whipped around a clear mountain lake.

"Are you cold?" Regina asked.

Elijah's teeth chattered.

"I ne-never g-g-get c-c-c-cold," he said.

After our hike, we went to a small-town burger-and-shake joint that Mike likes. His wife is a vegetarian, and he has few vices, so he gets naughty with beef. Elijah had a corn dog, which we let him take into the car. Michael sat in the back, with the boy. Unbeknownst to him, but knownst to us, he'd endeared himself to Elijah. The results of such an attachement can be mixed.

"I like corn dogs," Elijah said.

"You do?" said Michael.

"Uh-huh," Elijah replied. "And so does Hot Man."

"Really."

"Yes. He cooks them with his hot power and then he eats them in a dumpster that he keeps in a tree."

"I see."

"Dr. Boney likes corn dogs, too."

"Who's Dr. Boney?" Michael asked.

Now Elijah was really off.

"Dr. Boney is an old robot with blood all over his skin. He has two kids. Their names are Hoogie and Floogie. And he lives all over a mountain with Hill Man. Hill Man has two really long arms and he sucks people into the top of a mountain, and Hot Man tries to stop him, but sometimes Hot Man runs into Slimy Man and then he gets covered in slime which is really hot-dog poop..."

I'd heard this story, or variations on it, many times, and found myself drifting into a pleasant post-hike sleep. Twenty minutes later, I awoke to hear this.

"Now Hot Man is all over the corn dog, and he has to protect it from Mr. Dang and Tree Man, because we picked up Mr. Dang on the highway where he was eating dinner, and he's very hungry, and Tree Man likes popsicles and then he plays baseball in the garbage with squirrels."

"What the hell is going on?" I said to Regina.

"Elijah has these ketchup packets, and he's pretending that they're superheroes."

"They're not ketchup!" Elijah said. "They're Hot Man and his bad guys, and they only taste like ketchup."

He turned to Michael. "Now let's keep playing," he said.

Later, at home, Michael sat on the sofa, looking stunned.

"How'd it go?" his wife asked.

"Elijah never stops," Michael said.

Elijah ran into the room.

"Daddy!" he said. "Lamp Post Man is here, and he's very angry!"

"He never stops," my cousin said again.

Let me tell you: Nothing revives the spirit like spending a weekend with your family at a hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia. Elijah did quite well. He slept on a sofabed, ate room service, and watched Canadian kids' TV, which is just as annoying as American kids' TV, only with fewer commercials and slightly less violence.

One morning, Elijah and I descended into the lobby while Regina and Hercules were putting on their faces up in the room. The seat at the concierge desk was empty. Elijah sat down. Another guest found that adorable and approached him, with a British accent.

"Pardon me," he said. "But can you recommend somewhere for lunch today?"

Elijah pondered this a moment, and then said,

"I think you should eat at Ice Cream Harbor."

A collective "awwww" wafted over from the reception desk, which was populated by cute women in their 20s who hadn't yet seen the dark side of child-rearing. Later that day, we returned home from our charming family bike ride. We found a card in our room, thanking Elijah for all his hard work, and bestowing upon him the gift of two free pints of ice cream.

He ran around the room, flapping his arms and saying "YAY! ICE CREAM!" I nearly forgave him for the on-the-floor temper tantrum he'd thrown earlier in a sandwich shop because his shoes had gotten wet in the grass. But not quite.

Also on our trip, I took Elijah into the steam room for the first time.

"It's too hot in here," he said.

"There are many mysteries of the steam," I said.

"What kind of mysteries?"

"People have been going into steam rooms for thousands of years," I said. "Especially Jewish people."

"You're Jewess," he said.

"Yes."

"Mama isn't Jewess."

"No."

"I'm kind of Jewess."

"Yep."

"Grandma and Opa are Jewess."

"Boy, are they ever."

"Daddy?"

"What?"

"It smells in here."

"What does it smell like?"

"It smells like an old man died."

I wanted to tell Elijah about the steam room I used to go to in Chicago, where an old man had actually died, and I'd also once found a turd on the floor. That's the kind of information that he finds interesting and useful. But he was already headed for the exit, and colder waters.