Kayaking and eye color

Aside from being healthy, I would guess that every parent has hopes for what their child will look like, which features will be passed down, and what their interests will be.

There were two things I really cared about.

Eye color and kayaking.

Seriously.

I mean, did I also want my kid to be cute and smart? Of course. I'm really happy I didn't give birth to an ugly dumb-dumb. But, in all reality, Toby having brown/black eyes and loving to kayak was among the top five things on my wishlist.

I fell in love with kayaking way before it was the cool thing to do. I was introduced to it when I was about 13 years-old and I quickly became obsessed. So, basically that means I've been a kayak-er for over TWENTY years. Sheesh.

My mother bought me my very first kayak. My parents had recently divorced and it was the first Christmas I had with just her. She worked a lot of overtime to be able to buy it for me and it was one of my most "favoritest" gifts ever.

When I met Aaron he thought kayaking was neat but, nothing he had ever really taken an interest in (kind of how I feel about cycling.) I'm lucky that he fell right in love with it. So, we purchased a kayak for him.

Then we had Toby. Obviously I really wanted him to love kayaking, too. So, we purchased a tandem kayak. He sits in the front with me while Aaron paddles us around (tough life.)

Then, Aaron made Toby a special seat in the tandem kayak.

Then, Toby wanted to start sitting in the kayak by himself with Dada.

So, obviously, the next step was to buy Toby his very own.

And he loves it.

Last weekend, Toby kayaked for the first time "all by himself." If you've ever been in a kayak you must know that you don't have to be in amazing physical shape to simply propel yourself through the water using only a paddle. You do, however, need to have a little bit of balance. Well, Toby is three and squirmy but, he held his own paddling along (he was also tethered to Aaron's kayak.) He didn't tip once. He figured it out quickly and tolerated about an hour of kayaking before he wanted to go fishing and have a snack.

I'm one proud Mama.

By the way, in case you were wondering, Toby has brown/black eyes. Soooo, all of his other awesomeness is a total bonus... and I'm two for two.