Brothers

The weekend before last, Marino met his brother, Quintyn for the first time. Quintyn, my stepson, is 11 and lives in Iowa. I was initially concerned that Marino would be confused by the concept of having a brother, or not understand the importance of this family member. Those fears were unfounded. He seemed to intrinsically know that Quintyn was special and to be his best friend.

This picture was taken just a couple hours after Quintyn arrived.

Evan and his 2 boys.

Quintyn has a baby brother (11 months old) so he has big brother experience. For the most part, he is excellent with Marino, although at times he expects Marino to play on his level instead of vice versa (I heard them playing upstairs the other day and Quintyn saying "No, Marino. You need to come up with your own battle plan!") They definitely can get on each other's nerves, as brothers do, but for the most part, they are as thick as thieves.

On Sunday, we picked up my cousin Samantha and headed to North Beach. It was super hot (about 100 degrees) but that meant the water was warm and the beach wasn't packed. Marino has gotten significantly more brave in the water this year and was willingly dunking his head in the water and "swimming" around. Prior years he would cling to us like a spider monkey but he was "swimming" away from us on this excursion.

We saw some cool stuff on the beach - lots of (dead) crabs (all the better to pick up!) and when we first arrived, a man put in our sand bucket a small minnow he had caught. As an aside, I wanted to mention how amazing being a parent is...it connects you to so many different people...the love we feel for our children is universal. This man didn't speak English, but he knew this fish would make Quintyn and Marino happy, so he silently came over and gave it to them. The boys had lots of fun with it until I had mercy on it and let it go after Marino repeatedly picked the poor thing up.

We had a great time! Lots more brother adventures coming soon!