My Daredevil Offspring

I'm in trouble... I always knew I'd be in trouble, having given birth to Nick's offspring... but, really. I'm in trouble.

Yesterday, we spent the day on the boat, and Nick and a couple of his buddies played around flinging each other off of our new tube. The kids played around in the tube, while we were on shore for a while... shown here:

That's cute, right? Yeah, cute and calm and SAFE. Okay, kids, glad you had your fun.

WRONG.

Daredevil Damon (he's 5 years old, in case anyone forgot... OH, and he can't swim... read on...) decided he wanted to tube... really tube. In the middle of the bay. hmmmm, Mommy's getting a few more gray hairs just at the mention of this activity.

But, Daddy, who likes to encourage his boy to be a "boy" said, "okay, Damon, hop in the tube and hang on!" Daddy putted around, not even making a wake, and figured Damon would FREAK as soon as we pulled away from our little shoreline. HA! Here's how it started:

Nice and calm, no wake... weeee! This is fun. We're expecting Damon to start screaming that he wants off this ride, but instead we hear, "Go FASTER, DAD!!!" So, Nick goes a little faster:

See us pulling away from the shore (Damon's still not freaking), and the wake is increasing a little (still not freaking... Mommy, however, is a nervous wreck at this point)...

And, again, we hear, "FASTER!!!" and Damon's back there bouncing around in the tube, so Nick goes a little faster still:

Notice how the shoreline is a distant memory at this point? And the wake is getting increasingly larger? And I know you can't SEE his face or hear any audio here... but he was grinning ear to ear and squealing with delight, and yes, screaming, "FASTER, DAD!!!"

To sum up, Damon loves tubing. He would've hung on for dear life back there half the day if we'd let him. We adults on the boat were amazed that my baby went on a "real" tubing run.

*And for those of you concerned "safety-first" readers, we did have an emergency action plan... if, for some odd reason, Damon went overboard, Mommy was to resist her maternal instincts and remain seated in the boat, while "Uncle" Tom jumped in the freezing bay to perform the heroic rescue. Plus, he had his SpongeBob lifejacket on.... what could be safer than THAT??