now a word from our sponsor

Our trip to Castle Island, and all future scooting and biking trips, are brought to you by Mountain Dew. Do the Dew!

How is it that our two and-not-even-a-half-year old is sporting a soda logo, when he is not even aware of the existence of soda? Mountain Dew is considering sponsoring him for the 2022 X Games? Jonathan is a HUGE Dew drinker? Gus has a big head? Bingo.

His cute, age-appropriate fishy helmet has not fit him for months. A friend's husband even stopped us on the street to tell us this, but we had not gotten around to replacing it, since, honestly, replacing things just gets old, and we were not really worried about him "riding" (we are still pushing, and pretty slowly, 99% of the time) his trike with an ill-fitting helmet. But a scooter! That's a whole different animal.

So on our way to Castle Island, Grandpa, Linda, Gus, Theo and I stopped at Toys R Us to pick up a new helmet. Grandpa's treat. In my head I was getting a little cranky, anticipating the helmet Gus would pick. I suspected it would be Thomas and I cannot stand how companies capitalize on children's passion for their favorite characters by sticking them on everything under the sun. And sure enough, when we got to the meager selection of helmets, Gus gave them the once over and said, "I want the Thomas one." But it only came in size 3+, which is smaller than his fishy helmet! Phew.

Or maybe not, phew. Turns out Gus wears a size youth 8+. And the selection of those was even smaller. Gus got excited for a purple one with butterflies, "Sophie has that one!" But that was also a 3. Phew, for the battle Gus would have had with Grandpa over that one. So our choices were black with red skulls, kind of a mud grey, very plain, that was the one I would have picked, an ugly neon Mongoose one, or the shiny green one. Gus liked the green.

So now Gus is happily scooting around, advertising soda, which is so taboo with the parents of the toddler set. I am thinking we are going to get some funny looks, but that is okay. The Dew helmet is way cooler than a Thomas helmet. And if I get any weird looks, I can just say, "Your kid does not have a sponsor yet?"