...He Probably Thinks This Blog is About Him

(It is)


Eamon got another new haircut today.

See, he has my super-dry hair. Which means that in the winter, when the air is dry anyway, his hair tends to...stick up a lot. In lots of different, and often kind of silly, directions. Alfalfa had nothing on some of Eamon's recent hair (which thankfully he never really got sight of in a mirror, otherwise it would have been all over).

So rather than running around like he has the world's worst case of bedhead all the time, we decided to cut his hair short and style it in that kind of intentionally-sticking-up hairstyle that is just so in right now.

My parents took him, as usual. My mother texted me to make sure it was all right, and it suddenly occurred to me...my kid is cooler than I am. This isn't so out of the ordinary, as youth often defines coolness, but I think it's more than that...I think Eamon, at the tender age of 2, is probably cooler than I ever was.

And what makes him cool? Well, he's cute, and that's one thing. But mostly...he's confident. Really confident. For instance, in a room full of kids, if everyone is on one side of the room playing, Eamon...might be there. If he feels like being there. But he might also be on the other side of the room, if he feels like being over there. Quite simply, he doesn't care what everyone else is doing.

And the other kids his age often notice. They realize that he doesn't particularly care about what they're doing...so they start to care about what he is doing instead.

I think that's the secret to being cool. In fact, that's the definition of cool, right?

The sad part is that I never really realized until I started watching him. I was one of those kids who always cared what others were doing...always worried that if I wasn't doing the same thing, I was doing something wrong, and if I was doing the same thing, I was too conformist. I spent most of my childhood either trying to fit in or deliberately be different. But either way I simply cared, and that made me uncool.

I'm not trying to say that Eamon doesn't care about things. He does. He wants our love and affection and praise. He generally wants to be liked...it's just that if he isn't, he tends to think it must be you, not him.

He's just a confident little kid.

And sometimes, well, occasionally, this wonderful, inherent sense of confidence...it might just edge over into...ah, well...vanity. It's true. I have to admit it. Eamon is kind of...a little in love with Eamon at this point. My mother says it's just because he's developing a sense of self...but I don't see other kids in his gym class as enthralled with the mirrored walls as they are with the fun gym equipment. When Aaron took Eamon to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, Eamon's same-aged cousin Lucas didn't run around kissing every single image of himself in every single mirror in the Hall of Mirrors. And no other kids in swim class freak out when they realize that their hair is messed up after swim class and spend the entire time their moms are dressing them trying to smooth it back into place.

The difference between Eamon and a 15 year old girl, though? Eamon isn't doing any of this for anyone else. He's not worried what you're going to say about his hair...he wants to look good because he wants to look good.

But that kissing the mirror thing? Yeah, I don't know what that's about.

Must be a cool person's thing.