Hanging out with Nash

The last two night Nash's mommy has been out of the house. On Thursday night she had a board meeting at our local Down syndrome foundation and tonight was Mom's night out with 25 other mom's from our organization.

With that in mind Nash and I got to hang out and entertain ourselves and as guys do when Momma is not home we went out to eat both nights. I always enjoy hanging out with Nash and always am intrigued by the looks that we get as Daddy and son goof off and entertain ourselves in public. We always have a great time. I do always wonder why we get the looks that we receive.

Not long ago our DADS group that I have talked about before had received a behind the scene tour of the elephant barn here at The Indianapolis Zoo which I will tell you is a wonderful place and we are so lucky to have a zoo of this quality here in Indianapolis. That day there were 25 dads and their kids whom all have Down syndrome that got to have some fun with the elephants. We even had the chance to get up close and pet one and pose for a picture. I am not sure who enjoyed it more us or our kids.

After the tour the DADS and kids that could stay went off to a local Mexican place here in Indy called Acapulco Joe's which is a wonderful hole in the wall that is famous in these parts because they serve their home made salsa in squeeze bottles. It's great tasty stuff and fun to squeeze out on the chips and the kids love it too as long as you make sure the have the mild stuff. Nash will eat the mild salsa and go....Yum Daddy.....Spizy. Which always makes me chuckle.

As we were enjoying our time one thing that I had noticed when we walked in were quite a few stares that we all received as we came in. As usual I processed these stares as looks of interest at all the children with ds in the same place at the same time.

As I sat there on that Friday afternoon being so proud of my son for the day he was having I pondered the stares a bit more. Then I noticed the two ladies behind us were very interested in our table and watched us closely. As they discussed us at their table they noticed me watching and we struck up a conversation about the food.

As we talked they finally confessed they had been watching and talking about our group and made the comment that you guys really stand out in the crowd. I thought to myself here it comes .....The conversation about our kids and how sweet they are and they are gifts from god and all the things people can sometimes say trying to be nice when they notice your child has a disability.

Well you could have picked me up off the floor when what they had to say was how awesome it was to see a group of DADS taking off of work on a Friday to spend time with their kids. They thought it was really awesome and they never even brought up Down syndrome.

So what is the point of my story today..... As fathers and dads we need to spend more time with our kids just hanging out. It has nothing to do with whether our kids have a disability or not.....what matters is that what these ladies noticed was a group of fathers taking a day off work to spend it with their kids. Nobody would have looked twice if it would have been a group of moms.

I hope all the fathers who may read this post will make a point of doing something this week with their children. Leave Mom at home and give her some time to herself. And if you are lucky enough to have some other friends that are willing to join you it will be a great experience.

Sure am glad Momma had things to do last night and tonight so I could hang with Nash last night over steak and tonight with our buddy Kirk and his son Avery.

Have a great weekend.