And then I spotted a flying saucer

We begin the day with a good hike, an activity I used to think was overrated but over time have grown to enjoy. Think of it as golf without the greens fees. Instead of a set of clubs, I push the jogging stroller, which wouldn’t be so bad except that there’s a baby inside. Noisy. Half-dressed. Belly full of breast milk. An easy rider, off to see the world.

“I hate this,” the little girl says.

“This is wonderful,” says her mother.

“We’re almost to the top,” I assure them.

To the little girl, this is the hiking trail where Hansel lost Gretel. Where Dorothy made a wrong turn to Oz. It reminds her of that one car trip we all took to Sea World.

“Look, a rabbit!” I say excitedly.

“Ahhhh!” she screams and jumps on my back.

An hour later, we are in a restaurant having breakfast. The waiters look like Ralph Lauren models. The pretty waitresses all seem to have those upturned, see-up-the-nostrils noses. Nothing bad could ever happen here.

“Want me to hold him?” I ask of the baby.

They have put us in the baby section with all the other parents who couldn’t manage a romantic Valentine’s dinner out. Instead, we have opted for breakfast with the kids. It is like a thriller where you know something horrible is going to happen, you just don’t know exactly when. First thing, we move the knives and water glasses from the baby’s reach, as if disarming Dillinger.

Recently, we have had bad experiences at public places like this. At a wedding, we nearly set fire to the table when a napkin got too cozy with a candle. Then, last weekend, at little TraciLyn’s bat mitzvah, I swallowed a deviled egg the wrong way, then spent the next seven hours of the bat mitzvah, which I understand isn’t that long for a mitzvah, recycling the egg. It seemed to lodge in different places in my giant throat, creating a sort of film loop near the esophagus. Still there, the egg. They don’t call them deviled for nothing.

“Want me to hold him?” I ask again, sensing yet another disaster.

“I’ve got him,” says my wife, who this morning eats her German pancakes with her right hand while holding the baby’s plate in place with the left.

At which point, the baby manages to Frisbee his plate off his high chair and across the restaurant floor, where it whirl-whirl-whirls like a hubcap before finally coming to a stop. The baby squeals with delight amid the muffled snickers of the other diners. The little girl covers her face. As usual, we’re here to entertain as much as to eat.

“Can we leave?” the little girl asks after half the restaurant staff rushes to help us clean up.

“Finish your pancakes,” her mother orders.

So began our Valentine’s, just another day of poetry and lust in an American suburb.

“I’d better hold him,” I say.

“OK,” my wife finally agrees.

I raise the baby in my hands like a basketball. He seems to eat all the time, yet I can feel his diaphragm with my thumbs and his lungs with my ring fingers. Little by little, he stuffs his tiny feet down the front of my shirt, looking to warm his toes. Think parenthood doesn’t come with some trade-offs? Think again.

At a year old, the baby feels somehow obligated to move or throw anything that isn’t cemented to this Earth. Other babies, we notice, sit sleeping in their baby carriers or cooing at their parents. Ours spends most of this Valentine’s breakfast either fondling the waitress or dropping things to the Pergo floor. Sugar packets. Spoons. Personal effects.

“No,” I scold when he grabs my eyeglasses.

“Yes,” he laughs.

“No, no, NO!” I assure him.

He is, more and more, the kid who swallowed the canary. His favorite activity at home is pulling books from his sister’s bookshelves, then smiling proudly. With a twinkle in his eye, he’ll smear grapes on the kitchen cabinets or even reprogram the cable box, so that it receives only reality shows or insipid sitcoms. That’s all your TV gets, too? See how clever he is?

Then in the afternoon, he will sit on the living room floor staring at things only he can see. If you look closer, you will notice that he is watching the dust particles drift slowly in the sunlight. He reaches up and grabs them, one by one, as if snaring butterflies in a garden. In his mind, he is either capturing errant angels or helping his mother clean house, no one is quite sure. Maybe he thinks they’re Valentines. Maybe he’s a Cupid.

“You do nice work,” I told him one day. “Need any help?”

“I think I got it,” he said with a nod.

Obviously.

*

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.